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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2009360" data-attributes="member: 1129">The Book of the RighteousWritten by Aaron LoebPublished by Green Roinin PublishingGRR1015ISBN: 0-9714380-6-4www.greenronin.com320 b & w pages$39.95It’s difficult to describe a book like this for a couple of reasons.  Up to now, 3rd edition books on deities have had a bit of a focus on deities as beings of immense but stated powers.  The Scarred Lands took care of this a little with the use of Avatars but they’re still stated.  Book of the Righteous on the other hand, more often reads like a collection of myths and lore from an ancient era.This book contains the background information, including myths, history, and background needed to slate it into almost any campaign setting.  It does this not by focusing heavily on the deeds of the gods in the mortal world, but on the gods themselves.  It starts with a single creator in a nameless void, a being whose name is to this day unknown, the Nameless One.  From him comes another, his second, Kador.  During this time, the Nameless One leaves but Kador, now into his own power, helps create others who in turn create the great Tree, Eliwyn, and from this tree come more gods and after a death and rebirth of the tree, the five mortal races of human, elf, Halfling, dwarf, and gnomes.  That in a nutshell is the basis of it.Of course there’s much more detail than that.  For instance, Kador goes mad with power and has a war with the other gods and is cast into Hell where he eventually becomes Asmodeus.  Yes, that’s right, the book has numerous ties to other Green Ronin products like Armies of the Abyss and Legions of Hell.  I strongly suspect that the groundwork laid here will be vital in the third book in the fiendish series that’s going to cover the Daemons next year.The background as a whole is solid, thought provoking and definitely inspires the GM to form his own little myths and ideas to place a race here or a race there.  The only drawback I see to this method of cosmology is that it means there are no racial gods.  While this concept has become more popular in many campaigns like Scarred Lands and Kalamar, there are still elements within those settings and the elements, like a race having a preferred god, are still evident here.  Actual racial gods themselves though?  Nope.The main body of this work is interested in providing grounding for GMs and players to work off from when using religion in a game.  The churches include numerous pieces of information to help guide the GM in crafting tools that work for his world.  Church descriptions start with a brief myth to give the reader an idea of what this religion is about.  Often times these myths show how the gods created new races like the titans or merfolk but in doing so, they tie the world into the gods.  Also included is what the god is associated with.  What type of animal does the god represent? What type of element?  What type of symbol?  The god’s Alignment is laid out in a single sentence leading into Representations which details how the god is often draw, sculpted or depicted in icons.  Now that you know what the god is and what he looks like, the author provides you with the Purpose of the God and the Servants of the God.The Church of the God also goes into much detail.  For example, you get structure, doctrine, common prayers, holy days, saints, the god’s view of the church, preferred weapon, holy orders, holy warriors, and prestige classes.That’s a lot of information.  It’s important to note though, that not all of the gods have the same amount of description.  Now doesn’t this go against all the advertising that talks about how no god will be left under detailed?  Well, no.  See even though the Nameless One has left the world, there are still those who contemplate him and these are the monks of a campaign setting and even though The Tree of Life, Eliwyn is listed as a god, its more a force worshipped and protected by, yup, Druids.  I can easily see those using the Shaman’s Handbook incorporating Shaman into the same faction as Druids.  In both cases though, there are no prestige classes.One of the easiest ways to use this book is through the Pantheon, a church organization where all of the gods are worshipped.  This idea is rarely used, and I think outside of the Hunt: The Rise of Evil campaign setting, the idea of worshipping the Pantheon as a whole is often underused in fantasy FRPGs in general.  Here, the Pantheon is a mighty body where Paladins work as knights and clerics work for the good of all.  In many ways, it’s very Christian like in its ideals.  Be good to your fellow man, live a good live, you know do the things you’re supposed to do.  Of course those who work for the Pantheon will note that its also a political body and those who are skilled at such games may chose to join the Prestige Class of the Deacon.  This class gains numerous bonus feats to augment their abilities with various charisma-based skills.  I’m actually in the process of rewriting the bonus feat selection since I’m either going to let the feat count as a Refined Skill Focus with a +3 bonus or a +2 bonus to two skills.One of the great things about the book is it introduces a concept that I haven’t seen put into core use in a long time.  Back in the days when Mayfair was publishing the City State of the Invincible Overlord, there was a class called the Avantari.  These were basically paladins for different faiths.  I’ve seen different takes on paladins done through prestige classes in several books including the Librium Equitis II, but I haven’t seen an attempt to customize them as a core class that I liked until now.The book introduces the Holy Warrior as a core class.  Unlike the Paladin who serves the forces of law and good and in this book, the Pantheon as a whole, the Holy Warrior is a core class that gains powers based on his god’s spheres of influence and abilities.  The book provides a ton of special abilities that the GM can use to customize his own game with if he’s not using the gods of this book.  Such abilities are labeled as domain abilities and the Holy Warrior starts off with four and gains two more at second level.  The main customization of the Holy Warrior happens with the Gift of God where they gain special abilities based on the god they worship.  Here I don’t think Green Ronin went far enough because the Domain Abilities are fairly simple to understand and use but without providing more ground work on what levels of spells the Holy Warrior should have access to, I can see campaigns where everyone is going to want to play a priest of X instead of Y because X gives “cool skillz” or something similar.  In addition to many prestige classes, there is a whole chapter to new rules including eleven new feats, one new skill, nine new domains, and numerous new spells, magic items and monsters.  In the monsters section, I was glad to see the Phoenix return to D20 but more pleased by Metteron, a companion to Terak, the ruler of the gods.  Metteron is a huge outsider and is “the lord of all animals in Heaven, the greatest of their number, and father to some of the world’s most noble beasts.”  The inclusion of such a creature pleases me for a number of reasons.  First, I can use it as a Beast Lord to tie in to the Shaman’s Handbook.  Next, I can use him to explain different races and creations.  Third, he’s a powerful creature and can showcase the strength of the gods without providing stats for the gods themselves.  In a similar vein, I was glad to see Raguel’s stats because this is an Archangel and its good to see how Green Ronin, known for their evil books, handles such a creature.  Suffice it to say that he’s powerful.  It’s also useful to have Raguel here because he has direct ties to Iblis from Legions of Hell.For those who already have a campaign setting and aren’t sure how to use this section, the lifesaver will be chapters nine and ten.  Chapter nine provides the GM with ideas on how to set up adventurers with a focus on using this book and campaign ideas on how to integrate this book while chapter ten provides some ideas on how to use these as new gods, gods from another plane, and methods of changing the mythology behind the gods themselves.  These two chapters provide most of the tools that a GM needs to integrate this fully into Freeport or another world with light details and without coming out directly and saying it, Greyhawk.  For example, the listing of gods in the mythology section has a simple list of gods like God of Dwarves: Korak, God of Death and Magic: Mormekar.  Gee, a female god of death and magic?  I wonder who that could be in the standard D&D pantheon?One of the strengths of the book is the art and graphic design.  There isn’t a single piece of what I’d say is poorly draw or illustrated work.  There aren’t huge gaps of white space.  The book is easy to read and very easy on the eyes.  When the book boasts on the back cover that it’s fit for the gods, they made sure to use a lot of great artists to insure that ranging from Drew Baker, Jennifer Meyer, Steve Lawton Mike Vilardi and others to make the book top notch.Is the book perfect?  It’s just about perfect in its own universe.  It ties together many things from Legions of Hell and Armies of the Abyss and is completely compatible with the Shaman’s Handbook.  When it has to be meshed with other settings, some problems start to creep in.  For example, since the Pantheon is mainly a just and good organization of gods and those gods that are unjust are often unknown, it becomes a little problematic when one wishes to introduce gods like the gods of Chaos found in the Warhammer setting or some of the more vile gods of evil in the Forgotten Realms in a very open manner.  It’s one thing to have an orc horde worship some nameless god whose true purpose is disguised but its quite another when they’re lead by a one eyed general who claims he is the reincarnation of their god.  Its also a little thorny with issues like Freeport because as we all know and love the city of pirates, there are often activities that point to ‘Outsider’ (read Cthulhu Mythos) creatures that have been spotted in the city and making sure everything meshes can get a little messy and requires some ground work.In addition, while I agree with the idea that gods don’t need stats, I also feel that since 3rd edition does support character play, to one extent or another, to the point where characters can challenge the gods, that providing some type of stats or baseline for them, even if its just their avatars ala Divine & Defeated, would’ve been a good thing.  Of course said stats might show up in a web expansion or something but that future remains to be seen.I was also a little disappointed that more prestige classes for all the gods weren’t presented.  In many instances, I could see why they wouldn’t do this.  It helps fit in the non-standard classes that may have religious ties like monks and druids, but at the same time, there are so many aspects to some of the gods that one can’t help but wonder… where’s the first web supplement?The Book of the Righteous is perfect for those who are playing in a world with a sparsely detailed world with little religious background on both church and god, like the Necromancer modules or Fiery Dragon modules, or are looking for more detail in religion for various types of gods like say for Greyhawk.  Are there things I’m missing out on this review?  Yes.  I haven’t really gone into the section on cosmology, which provides a very nice overview of the sphere in which this book is set.  I haven’t gone over the names of each god and the prestige classes that follow them.  I haven’t gone over the section on Putting Your Faith in Evil, as that’s primarily a smaller section aimed squarely at the GM who needs to insure that his players have some adversaries worthy of their mettle.  For not including these things, I apologize but one must realize that it’s a book over 300 pages long and I don’t want the review to equal it in size.If you’re looking to add a new core class, numerous prestige classes, monsters, feats, and spells to your campaign, then the Book of the Righteous is for you.  If you’re looking to add a whole bunch of powerful monsters in the forms of gods to your campaign, then move on to Faiths and Pantheons and Deities & Demigods because the gods in Book of the Righteous do not have stats and indeed, from the text, are above and beyond such things.REVIEWER'S NOTE:The Green Ronin Website has a seperate section called the Tree of Life that allows players and GMs to post their ideas and methods of using the book.  Excellent free resource.</blockquote>

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