Book of the Righteous - whats so holy?

[Utrecht]

I too have used it in my campaign.

Specifically, the Holy Warrior concept has replaced Paladins - to my players delight.

While I have not taken the gods directly - the Green Ronin cosmology is not quite what I am looking for - I have taken aspects of the gods and especially their churches - making them feel much more real.

 

[blackshirt5]

I bought the book from the ENWorld Online Store, and was immediately happy that I did. It's an awesome cosmology, very well thought out churches, and the whole thing is just very very good. I hadn't really detailed the religions in my world beyond those of the elves, so I decided to use this as the religion and cosmology for my game. The holy warrior class is very cool as well. I definitely think that it's better for someone doing a homebrew, however, than in a published setting.

Also, goes very well with a heaping side order of Legions of Hell and Armies of the Abyss.

 

[KDLadage]

I consider the BotR to be the finest third-party book published to date. It is far from perfection, however, but the total amount of usefulness within the covers of this book cannot be matched, in my no so humble opinion. I do plan to write a full review of this book soon for ENWorld.

But who should buy it? In my estimation, anyone that wished to be a Dungeon Master, running a campaign where religious themes are to play a major role. By this I mean where you have clergy that are more than just "Priests of the God of Fire" but have actual DOGMA to go with that God's beliefs. Now, obviously, if you have no set pantheon and wish to use the ones presented in the book, then the book will have the most value to you.

But I dare say that even if you have no intention of using the pantheon shown in the book, they serve as the best worked examples of complete, three-dimentional deities in role playing. Thus, using them as a template for the creation of your own pantheon, mining them for ideas to use in that new pantheon, and some additional rules for applying these ideas... it really does not get much better than this book.

Is it for everyone? No. No RPG book is. No book of any kind is.

Does it have a lot of crunchy bits? No, but this is not a downfall of the book at all. It is a wonderful testament to the system that such a pantheon can be handled in such detail without the need for a large amount of new rules to do it.

In the end, I cannot recomend this book enough. It rates a '5' from me.