The secret that Green Ronin has to making quality books is consistency. The authors usually have a great deal of experience with the system. Their artists are well known in the industry. Their layout is simple but effective and editing is solid.
Bow & Blade continues that tradition by making wood elves a force to be reckoned with. Like many of their books, much of this material is OGC, the text of chapters one through six and the appendix. Good deal eh?
The first chapter, The Way of the Forest, provides information not only on the Wood Elves, but also subraces including an elemental group, fire, metal, wind and water. These subraces are more powerful not only in their racial traits, for example, the fire elf gets +4 Dex, -2 Wis and +2 Cha, but also in their numerous abilities. Fire elves take no damage from fire, at a higher level, they can ignite their weapons with fire and have numerous spell like abilities that range as they go up in levels. All of these elemental races get a +3 level adjustment.
In addition to the elemental elves, the feral elves, a more primitive and savage aspect of wood elves, is included. Not quite as powerful as the elemental elves, the feral elves nonetheless have some unique special abilities like Nugaran Form, a shape that gives them advanced abilities like +6 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Con, -4 Int and -4 Cha, in addition to other modifications, just like a template.
For a second, I thought that the authors would do the reader a favor and provide some levels similar to Savage Species or Arcana Unearthed but no, just some notes on how to lower the power level of the elemental elves that allows a GM to wing it and bring the races power level more in line with the standard races.
Also included in chapter one, Wood Elven Religion, covers Prielghari, a good with five different aspects, one for each element, fire, metal, water, wind, and wood, as well as Worranak, the 'chaotic neutral embodiment of nature's impartial fury and unpredictability.'
Chapter Two, Skills & Feats, showcases a few uses for old skills, but focuses on new feats. Disguise can now be used to prepare camouflage and Handle Animal gets expanded not only with new tricks, but also new purposes. Spellcraft gets a huge boost with Spellblending, the ability to use a spell not on your class list. You can normally only do first and second level spells this way, but with different feats, can go all the way to ninth level. The Spellcraft DC's to use these spells are high, ranging from 25 at first, and 55 for 9th, but still seems too good.
The feats introduce two new types, Blood Magic and Soulbond Feats. The former relies upon the caster's blood while the latter uses a Soulgift Ceremony and requires a feat and experience point expenditure. At that cost, you know some of those abilities are powerful.
The Blood Magic feats starts with Blood Magic, which requires two ability scores at 15+ and allows the caster to prepare one blooded spell per available spell level. This adds +1 to the DC, +1 to caster level checks, and +1 point of damage per level. The bad news is that the caster takes 1d6 +1 point of damage per level of the bloodied spell and it can't be reduced or avoided, but can be healed normally. If you don't cast the spell, you don't take the damage. You can take Greater Blood Magic in order to cast two blooded spells per spell level or even work towards getting Superior Metamagic Blooding where you can use any one metamagic feat without changing the level of the spell. The bad news is that you take one point of Constitution damage per spell level with a save for half damage.
The Soufgift feat starts the Soulbond chain, provides the user the ability to know where the other is, as long as they're on the same plane, and provides a once per day, per level, a +4 insight bonus to any attack, save or check, as long as you're within 10 feet of your soulgift partner. There are some serious penalties though. For example, you never want to anger your soulgift partner as they can deny you from being raised should you die and if they decide to cast any spells against you, you take a -8 to save.
Still, the price is worth it as you can take various feats to augment spells or combat ability. Take Soulbond of Martial Powers where you get a +1 to melee attacks and use a weapon one size category different from your own with no penalty. How about Soulbond of Spells? No attacks of opportunity when casting spells in a threatened area as long as your within 10 feet of your soulgift partner.
In addition to the two new types of feats, there are numerous combat feats to make sure that the fighter's don't feel alone. This ranges from Fire Elf Bloodline, where you can make a weapon burn with fire similar to a fire elves' ability to Improved Rapid Shot, allowing you to take two shots with a greater penalty. Those looking for more out of their melee can take Sword Wind and Sword Wind Mastery. The former gives you an additional attack, similar to Rapid Shot, and the latter a +2 dodge bonus when making a full attack with the Sword Wind feat.
This doesn't count the magical and martial art styles. You are rewarded with a minor ability for following a chain of feats. It's been in numerous books in the Oriental Adventurers line and Dragon magazine. By taking certain skills and feats, you can gain some bonuses that vary from useful, like adding 20 feet to your bow range, to damn impressive, such as using an elven light spear in each hand with no penalty to strength bonus.
In addition to the races and feats, players want to know about the prestige classes and chapter three delivers on that. The new thing here is entry paths, multiple sets of requirements for entry, allowing you to reach the class through different means. It's an interesting idea and allows the GM to customize his PrCs even more.
There are numerous PrCs that not only follow the way of the woods, but also work against it. Take The Initiate of the Ashen Path, a master of fire, gaining abilities to use Flame Burst with a resistance to fire with the burst growing larger as the character advances. In some ways, it reminds me of the burned treants from the Complete Guide to treants and these characters would make good comrades for those evil souls. For those who want a superior archer, the soul Archer provides numerous bonuses ranging from using Greater Magic Weapon on her bow, to Arrow Tags. These arrows tag an emey struck by them and grants a bonus to hit that foe with other attacks. The speardancer is provided as a free preview on Green Ronin's website so readers can get a quick fix now of how the class has it's multiple entry paths. I wanted to see more of these multiple path entries and see more rules for implementing this on previous classes as it's a tool that could augment the GM's PrCs without reinventing or creating more.
GM's get a break with Chapter Four, as it focuses on Creatures. It starts off with Children of the Wood, small creatures the size of halflings with light green skin and a delicate appearance. Now the interesting thing is that the authors provide you with a level progression if you don't want to use the creature with it's default challenge rating of six, giving you six levels for the Child of the Wood, as well as information on using them as characters. About the only odd thing is that this is the first monster that I've seen where it's Level Adjustment, +2, is less than it's CR, which is 6.
Other creatures include the Nugarik, an evil creature that looks part crocodile and part wolf and the dangerous treeskinner worm, another huge monster that looks like a massive centipede or segmented worm. Other creatures help round out the chapter like Vine Corrupted, an evil that inflicts animals, turning them into dangerous killers. Of course, the fact that the example template is a dire bear doesn't help adventurers either.
Those looking for new spells can flip to Chapter Five, Spells and Magic. There are spells for almost every core class, bard, cleric, druids, sorcerer, wizard, shaman, and witch. I was glad to see that the core classes introduced by Green Ronin were supported here as it saves a GM who has those books the time of deciding what's right or wrong and doesn't take up that much space. This doesn't count the new domains of Wood and Wild.
The new feature here is affinity based spells. These are spells that any spellcaster of the right level and race can cast. For example, Scent is a 2nd level elf spell. It's also on the Druid, Shaman, Ranger and Witch list, but if an elf wizard with a 2nd level slot open wanted to learn this without issue and cast it as an arcane spell. It's an interesting idea and reminds me of some of the old restricted spells from previous editions without being that.
The good news is that the spells have a wide range of levels from 1st level spells like Detect Sentience, to 9th level spells like Magical Investiture, Greater. This allows the GM to highly customize his wood elves and insure that the players get quite a different taste of this unique race.
Now you've got all you need for the character. All you've got to do now is equip him. That's where chapter six comes in. there are new exotic weapons ranging from Blade Bows and Double Spears, to Farbows and Greatbows. The illustrations here by Danforth are good, but not labeled but most are self evident. For example, the spear that looks like it has a sword at the end of it is probably an bladespear. The big section here is all of the new arrows. These range from screaming and nets to alchemical and double. All together, there are seventeen new arrows for players to try out.
In addition to weapons and armor, there are some new special substances ranging from alchemical to poison. Some of these like Askelaing Leaf, can be made into razor sharp weapons that do an extra point of damage while others like True Flame, are capable of burning almost anything. Now imagine if you use this on one of those alchemical arrows eh? Nice combination.
The chapter finishes off with new magic items. We get new magic armor properties like maximized healing, where any healing spell cast on the wearer is maximized, to feather falling arrows that cushion the wearer should he fall while holding one. The items here add variety and options to any forest based encounter, but I'm a little disappointed that there are no artifacts or even scion basted items that could take advantage of Artifacts of the Ancients. Where are those legendary longbows that the wood elves have used for eons?
The book closes out with typical NPCs, listed from 1st to 20th level, including class, hit dice, hit point, stats, armor class, touch, flat footed, and other important features. A two page index helps round out the book and provides further utility.
One aspect of this book that looks different is an upcoming product, the Village of Corwyl, a fleshed out wood elf village. It should be interesting to see how that book ties into the material here and if it's useful without it. Support for the Master Class and Races books has been minimum in terms of setting so far so this makes a new change in previous direction. Too bad it's a village and not say, a city though.
Formatting and layout are good. Only in a few instances, like on page 19, where the +2 racial bonuses isn't bolded, do little things slip by that most probably won't notice. The art is one of the book's strengths as Liz Danforth, Stephaine Law and Jennifer Meyer do a great job of brining the Wood Elfs to life.
Being a theme book, you should stay away if you don't like wood elves. Sure, there's a lot of great material here and a lot of new ideas and expansions on new ideas like martial arts, but it is heavily involved with wood elves.
Bow & Blade is perfect for those GM's who want to move away from High Elves and can help a GM easily stimulate anything from Warhammer's Wood Elves to reclusive Elemental Elves that emerge from seclusion to fight orc invasions. It includes everything a player's looking from, from races, feats, PrCs, spells and equipment, as well as providing useful tools for the game via new types of feats and new ideas like affinity based spells.
