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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2010144" data-attributes="member: 1129">The Complete Guide to Treants is a bit of a departure from the standard Complete Guides.  While it’s not a 128-page tome like some of the Slayers Guides, it is greater than previous Complete Guides, weighing in at 48 pages with a matching price of $13, much closer to the competition that runs about $12.95.Internal art is done by Tom Galambos and Thomas Denmark and is good.  The layout is standard two-column with perhaps just a tad too much white space.  Editing is good.  Interior covers are not used.  The OGL takes up a single page and the table of contents and credits takes up a single page.So what does the Complete Guide to Treants bring to the game?  While there is a bit of physiology and social structure, the majority of the book focuses on the crunchy stuff.  For example, there are two ways to introduce treants as characters.  The first is ala a standard treant, which would be an ECL of 11.  First level character would be 12th level then.  Not too good.  However, you could start as a sapling.  Now you’ll probably not advance too much in the Treant class as it takes years of time for physical growth that accompanies the levels, but you start off as a ECL +4 and can gain levels in other classes.What about unique classes?  Treants can belong to three different standard classes like Leafsingers, Treeherders and Woodwardens.  These classes are very similar to bards, druids and rangers.  One suggestion the book offers is that the classes are so similar because the druids taught the elves that taught the humans.  An interesting concept, especially when one considers how old treants can be.Another class presented isn’t quite so standard, the Firesworn.  See, while the majority of the book focuses on crunch, there are bits and pieces of history, philosophy and other role-playing material in the book.  The Firesworn are treants who’ve survived the death of their forest through fire and have almost been killed (brought to negative hit points) and now swear an oath to Fireheart, one of the main forces in their religion, to take vengeance.  These creatures take this oath on a burning coal, which turns the hand into a spiky club that can burst into flames.  They get fire resistance and other fire related powers as they gain levels but the most interesting thing is that they can be redeemed if they finish their revenge.  New Feats help flesh out treants abilities and make them a bit different than standard races.  For instance, they don’t scribe scrolls, they craft magic seeds.  They don’t necessarily make normal magic items, because they can make living magic items.  In terms of combat, Giant’s Throw allows them to throw grabs characters while improved corrosion double triple damage to objects.  Think that sword’s going to save you?  Not in a thousand pieces its not.A brief section on treant magic covers some examples of living items and magic seeds, but most will be interested in the new spells.  My only disappointment here is that only treant levels are listed.  It’d be interested to see what level Treeform, a variant of Flesh to Stone where the caster turns the victim into a tree, would be for a druid.  How about Ironbark.  Would this spell stack with Barkskin?Those not satisfied with new classes, magic items and spells shouldn’t’ despair.  They can always customize their treants with templates from appendix one.  These included the undead blasted treant and hollow treant, as well as the deep treant, a being who thrives off moss and the lichens underground.  Other templates like the forsaken allow the Gm to throw a mad treant at the party while the brambelshadow monsters are undead plants that are placed inside corpses and resemble the corpse they’ve grown out of.  While appendix two only has one new monster, it’s always interesting to see how evil plants can really be.  The Eater-of-Souls is a moving tree that eats souls.Now all of this information might be difficult to incorporate without those role playing notes and Joe Crow does an excellent job of providing a lot of sample NPCs and ideas to jump start any campaign.  The forest Thronleaf is watched over by a treant of that name but this ancient being is worried about his friend Longbranch.  That being, Longbranch, isn’t quite right in terms of his oneness with nature but like all treants, is a long-term planner and players may be unaware of anything wrong at all.Those looking for something different may wish to have the players seek out the dark undead powers of the Cursed One, a Hollow Treant that acts as a mentor and guide to dark necromancers who form cults around the monster.While the campaign notes for using treants as NPCs or PCs is only two pages long, coupled with the NPCs and setting notes, the GM should be able to run this material right out of the book either using the creatures as adversaries, allies, or neutral mentors who sit back and watch the world around them.  For a change of pace, some GMs might have their players take the role of treants and deal with the so-called fire Starters and Axe Wielders.While I’d have enjoyed more campaign notes and example maps of the locations mentioned, I’m quite pleased with the sheer amount of material in the book.  The templates, classes, magic items and spells will all find a use in my campaign and that’s about as high a recommendation as you can get.</blockquote>

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