Insert pithy saying about "ending at the beginning" here.
The final category of leatherette books takes us back around to the brown covers and gold lettering of the PHBR series. Of course, that's something of a misnomer, since this isn't
really its own category of leatherette books; these final three are part of the FOR series of supplements, of which there were twelve in total. It's the only time we see any of the leatherettes have a module code that isn't exclusive to them. And it started with
FOR9 Wizards and Rogues of the Realms.
When I write these retrospectives, I try not to tread too much on the product histories that are on the books' sales pages. But sometimes that can't be helped; the nature of salient details is to be salient, making it hard to overlook them. So in that case I can't help but note what's on that page with regard to how, as much as these final few supplements present themselves as being akin to PHBR sourcebooks, they're also a lot like the CGRs for their focus on presenting crunch that fleshes out the Forgotten Realms. But I'd say that the stylistic presentation evokes the former far more than the latter; not just in terms of the covers, but because by this point "kit books" were largely associated by everyone as being what the PHBRs brought to the table, though that's a somewhat unfair reduction of what they offered.
Be that as it may, TSR clearly agreed with that idea, since I doubt it's a coincidence that these books - filled to the brim with kits - were made to be PHBR-style leatherettes.
But let's focus less on these final three as a whole and instead turn our attention to this sourcebook specifically.
I'll note that most of the leatherette books with "and" in the title tend to be clearly divisible between two sections.
PHBR9 The Complete Book of Gnomes & Halflings had an obvious demarcation between the gnomes and the halflings.
DMGR1 Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide actually
was two different sourcebooks that were stapled together.
DMGR9 Of Ships & the Sea split its attention between sailing on top of the waves and adventuring under them, etc. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, of course (
DMGR3 Arms and Equipment Guide isn't so easily divided), but it's one that holds true here, as
Wizards and Rogues of the Realms divides itself neatly between the wizards in the first half of the book, and the rogues in the second.
Despite my noting that this book is filled to the brim with kits, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that each section actually opens with an entirely new class. Wizards get the spellsinger, while rogues get the shadow walker.
The pedigree between these two classes is notably uneven. While rogues (particularly thieves) have long been associated with shadows (going back at least as far as Roger Zelazny's
Jack of Shadows; there's a reason why that story was in the original Appendix N), the "shadow walker" doesn't seem to have any particular history in the Realms prior to its presentation here. If any Realms scholars are reading this, please let me know if there's something I'm overlooking, but given that the Realms has thief groups like the
Shadow Thieves, the
Shadowmasters, and the
Shadowcloaks, all of which are different from this particular class, it's perhaps no surprise that we don't see it again (that I'm aware of) in subsequent Realmslore.
That's perhaps something of a shame, since the class is an attempt to create a rogue-wizard hybrid, which wasn't something I'd expected from AD&D 2E. While I'm sure some people will disagree, "niche protection" always struck me as being strong in this edition; you could have a class that was
better than another class in the same role (i.e. the paladin or Dark Sun's gladiator compared to your ordinary fighter) so long as it had tougher entry requirements, but a class that could function in ways performed by two other classes always seemed like something the designers shied away from. That's what made "Bluehand" Ajathar (from back in
PHBR2 The Complete Thief's Handbook; remember him?) so badass.
Here, the shadow walkers give up quite a bit (their THAC0 is as per a wizard, and they split their saves between wizard and rogue progressions, can't use the pick pockets, climb walls, or read languages thief skills, among other restrictions), but can cast spells...albeit of only up to 4th level, and only from the Abjuration, Alteration (now called Transmutation), Illusion/Phantasm and Divination (both Lesser and Greater) schools of magic. They also get some class features revolving around being hard to see - and even hard to attack - in areas of dim light. I'm not sure how much this class is really worthwhile, but it seems like they were at least
trying for a hybrid concept...even if they made very sure to pile on the restrictions (did I mention that these guys can only be Neutral Good or Chaotic Good, are limited to humans, elves, and half-elves, and can't multiclass at all, though human characters can dual-class as them, but you have to
start as a shadow walker before switching to another class; vice versa isn't allowed).
Spellsingers, on the other hand...
Before anything else, let me get this out of the way: these guys dance a
lot more than they sing. I mean, they do both, but dancing is the central mechanic of the class. There's a reason why, when they reappeared as a prestige class in
Magic of Faerûn, they were called the "spelldancer."
In introducing the class, author William W. Connors notes what the book's DTRPG sales page notes, that these guys
do have a history in the Realms. But Connors doesn't go much beyond that, whereas the sales page tells us that spellsingers/dancers were mentioned by Ed Greenwood in early bits of Realmslore as being the main reason why various villages and townships could survive in such a wild and hostile world; these were your homegrown, intuitive, natural-talent spellcasters whose ability to manipulate magic via (lengthy, at least compared to "normal" spellcasting) dance rituals made them good for setting up defenses for their local communities, even if it also made them ill-suited for proactively trying to eliminate threats, which means that adventurers like your PCs are still needed.
Connors also doesn't mention that Greenwood, being the free-love hippie that he is, intended for this class to fill the "group of women who dance naked outdoors" archetype. Needless to say, the "it works better naked" aspect isn't found in what's here (though the book does note that something like 90% of spellsingers are women, for reasons no one's really sure about). So everyone who wanted that will have to stick with Eilistraee's clergy.
Instead, what we get is a class that, like Zakhara's sha'ir, eschews the usual limits on spells known and spells per day. Spellsingers can instead make a check in the Dancing nonweapon proficiency to cast the spell, which makes me roll my eyes at the idea that proficiencies were still being referred to as an "optional" feature of the game at this point. It takes them several rounds to do this, they can't do it for necromancy or evocation spells, and there are
numerous modifiers to the check (which are ameliorated if multiple spellsingers dance together), but they can choose a spell of any level to try and cast, from 1st on up, regardless of their own level; presumably things like true dweomers (from
Dungeon Master's Options: High-Level Campaigns), psionic enchantments (from
Dragon Kings), or even the spells of 10th level on up (from
Netheril: Empire of Magic) are off-limits, though it's interesting to consider if they could cast the realm magic from the
Birthright Campaign Setting; now
that would be a way to protect their local community!
Of course, the "Sage Advice" column in
Dragon #268 says that spellsingers can't cast spells with a level above what their Intelligence score would grant them (as per the table in the PHB). Now, since you need at least a 15 Intelligence (among other requirements) in order to quality for the class, that means they can still bust a move to cast a spell of at least 7th level, but that might help to keep them from throwing out
wish spells when they're dancing during downtime (this book actually includes a warning on making sure the class doesn't abuse its signature power).
The class has a few other powers as well, which are more in line with singing (e.g. a large-scale lullaby that can put a crowd to sleep, singing and dancing together to enthrall a crowd, etc.), but by far its biggest draw is casting spells via dancing. I'll note that this is apparently something only humans and half-elves can do; while it might seem like elves would take naturally to this, I say they don't need anything else after the Elven High Magic they got in
Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves. Yeah, it came later, but Connors was being forward-thinking in that regard; my only complaint is that it's not clear if half-elves who take this class have a level limit or not (the text is silent on that, so I suppose it depends on if you consider this to be a form of specialist wizard, in which case they'd be limited to 12th level).
And those are just the new classes, which only take up a fraction of the book. The bulk of it is given over to the kits.
My oh my, the kits...
I have to say, if kits had been presented like this from the very beginning, I think a lot more AD&D 2E veterans would look back on them fondly. Because these three sourcebooks are where kits - in terms of both design and presentation - reached their apex.
While presentation might not sound like a big deal, I consider it to be very important. You can have the best idea in the world, but if it's communicated in a way that's off-putting - which, in a textual format, can range from things like font choice to meandering text where snappy bullet points would do - then it's not going to get the attention it deserves. Connors clearly knew that, and redrafted the typical kit presentation into something that I consider to be far more user-friendly than what we saw in previous books. (It also cuts down on space, which I suspect was the real draw.)
Specifically, each kit now begins with a standardized two-column list of various aspects of a character, where the first column is the aspect, and the second column says how (or if) it's altered. So you can look right down the line and see (for example):
Racial Requirements human, elf, half-elf
Ability requirements Intelligence 9
Prime requisite Intelligence
Hit Die Type d4
Obviously, the second column would have standardized indentation, so the above isn't a perfect representation (and it would have a lot more), but it cuts down on a lot of the clutter. Thanks to this, each kit only needs to present five subsequent areas where it describes things at length: Overview, Description, Role-Playing, Special Abilities, and Special Disadvantages. Each typically gets a paragraph or two (but see below).
The way the book breaks the kits up is by geographic area of the Realms - that is, each kit specifies what it means to be a wizard or a rogue who learned their trade in that particular region - though a few substitute a particular
type of geography instead (e.g. the Island Kingdoms as a collective reference for Evermeet, the Moonshaes, and Nimbral). It goes through these areas twice over, once for wizards and once for rogues, so expect to see the "Wizards of the Dales" kit on page 17, and then the "Rogues of the Dales" kit on page 84. (Though there are some minor tweaking between the two; don't expect to see a "Rogues of Halruaa" kit even though wizards have one.)
As an aside, while this sourcebook never specifies if these kits can be applied to any class in the Wizard and Rogue class groups (the latter of which includes the thief and the bard classes, remember), its name seems to imply that it can. Several kits also mention using them in conjunction with being a specialist wizard. However, there are some rogue kits that seem like they'd be an odd fit with a bard (e.g. a kit which has the rogue give up their ability to backstab as a special disadvantage would be odd, since bards can't backstab to begin with). This is particularly true for the spellsinger and shadow walker, whose innate class powers make them seem like they'd be a poor fit for a lot of the new kits given here. Oh, the irony.
A little under twenty regions are described in total, which I suppose sounds like a lot until you remember how expansive the Realms is. But this is a problem that Connors deftly avoids by giving most (though not all) of the kits sub-listings, and even sub-sub-listings in a few cases.
Take the aforementioned "Wizards of the Island Kingdoms," for instance. It covers Evermeet, the Moonshaes, and Nimbral, as noted before. But rather than assigning a singular set of abilities for each of these very different lands, the kit says that the material in the initial columns are the same (e.g. the racial requirements, Hit Die size, prime requisites, etc.) but the five areas of greater explanation - Overview, Description, Role-Playing, Special Abilities, and Special Disadvantages - have separate entries for each kingdom. So the elven wizards of Evermeet are described differently from the wizards of the Moonshaes, who are also described differently from those of Nimbral. The Special Abilities and Special Disadvantages, in particular, are very different, and so makes the kit function as essentially three kits folded into one. It's a brilliant way of squeezing a lot more information in here than a glance at the table of contents would otherwise suggest. (And as for the "sub-sub-listings," the abilities and disadvantages that wizards from Evermeet receive are
themselves different depending on what sub-race of elf they are!)
Personally, I've long been of the opinion that the Special Abilities and Special Disadvantages are what make or break a kit, and while there are some duds here - wizards from Archendale get either the Fishing or Herbalist proficiency for free, in exchange for treating their Charisma score as being 2 points lower when interacting with anyone outside of Archendale - there are a
lot of evocative options here. The wizards of Nimbral, for instance, are all specialists in the Illusion school, but don't give up any other schools for doing so, get bonus spells for high Intelligence (which normally only priests get for having a high Wisdom), and have quicksilver eyes that function as infravision,
detect magic, and
see invisible, all out to 120 feet. In exchange for which, they have d3 Hit Dice and can't gain bonus hit points from their Constitition, get no weapon proficiency slots
ever, and are temporarily blinded if hit by a
dispel magic (and are blind the entire time they're in a dead magic zone), along with taking a penalty to saves against gaze attacks. How's
that for evocative?
My only real complaint about this book is that characters can't double up on the kits found in this book with those from other sourcebooks. While the "only one kit ever" rule might sound like an odd one to complain about, the kits here present options based on the cultures of geographic areas in the Realms - which is an idea that I like a lot, as it helps a lot to ground and flesh out the world - but that rules out kits based on alternative backgrounds. Taking the Peasant Wizard kit from
PHBR4 The Complete Wizard's Handbook feels like it should be orthogonal to being a Wizard of the Western Heartlands, especially since the former has such minor game mechanics compared to the latter.
But that's a minor gripe, and not really one that can be laid at the feet of this sourcebook. Overall, this is probably one of the single best kit books in all of AD&D 2E, and it seems like a shame that it's gone (as far as I can tell) largely ignored by the gaming community. It takes the idea of kits and presents them as they always should have been - deft in presentation, grounded in theme, and evocative in mechanics - and actualizes their potential. Even if you don't play in the Realms, it'd be easy to change a few names around and use these in a home game, giving a lot of feel to particular places besides a minor note in a character's background.
As we move toward the end of the leatherettes, it's nice to see that the series seems to be closing on a high note.
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