D&D 2E [COMPLETE] Looking back at the leatherette series: PHBR, DMGR, HR and more!

Voadam

Legend
As a concept, I think concise player guide books to settings with a lot of lore are great. I just picked up An Adventurer's Guide to Eberron for the same purpose despite owning a bunch of Eberron 3e, 4e, and 5e books including a big core setting book for each of the three editions.

Good to hear the FR one did well for that purpose.
 

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delericho

Legend
The "Players Guide to the Dragonlance Campaign" was, for a very long time, the single worst D&D product I own - and pretty much the only one that I consider an outright rip off. (The new worst is "Scourge of the Howling Horde", which is incompetent on every level - but even that was at least new material.)

It is also, unfortunately, the last volume in this series that I own, meaning that this is probably where I bid farewell to this thread. It's been fun!
 

Alzrius

The EN World kitten
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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Alzrius

The EN World kitten
For FOR10 Warriors and Priests of the Realms, it's second verse, same as the first...except, not exactly.

For the most part, this book is exactly what you'd expect it to be. After the first book covered half of the four class groups, it's no real surprise that its follow-up would cover the second half. But it plays with the formula for the priest group, in a way that I found myself liking a great deal. But before getting further into that, the new classes deserve a look.

The harper is a Warrior class (i.e. in the same group as fighters, rangers, and paladins), and right away that made me raise an eyebrow. I mean, I've read enough of the Realms novels to know that the Harpers are a loose-knit organization that diversifies its operatives, but that's because a lot of those operatives treated...harping? Harpering? ...whatever it's called, as something of a side-gig more than an actual way of life. Maybe I'm misremembering, but the impression I always had was that most harpers were essentially people who let Harper high command know that they'd be happy to do the occasional mission for them, with only a dedicated core being all harpering all the time.

For those dedicated core members, I can see having a harper base class...but not as a member of the Warrior group. Really, given that the classical harpers tend to be itinerant rogues who with some musical talent (it's kind of in the name), I'd have expected a harper base class to be part of the Rogue group. Of course, I'd also have expected it to be in FOR4 The Code of the Harpers, but here we are.

As it stands, the class does have several aspects to it that make it more rogue-ish, such as being able to hide in shadows and move silently as a thief or bard, along with being able to identify (harper) runes and use (harper) sign language, which are also percentage-based abilities. I'm honestly surprised they don't just give them their own secret language a la Druidic; they get the ability to pass without trace a few times per day, after all. Did I mention they can choose Warrior or Rogue nonweapon proficiencies without a penalty also?

Oddly, in what I suspect is a balancing mechanism (along with their higher ability score prerequisites and only getting bonus XP if they have very high Strength and Wisdom scores), they can't specialize in a weapon. Similarly, while it makes sense that you can't have evil-aligned harpers, I reserve the right to remain miffed about the book allowing any race to be a harper, but not outlining the demihuman level limits or multiclass combinations (and only implying that humans can dual-class into being harpers, with no word on if they can dual-class out of them). Some of us liked those restrictions, darn it!

And then we come to the other new class this book gives us: the crusader.

Funny thing though: that's not actually the class's name.

The book's sales page talks about this, but I can't resist repeating it here: in a case of parallel design (which is the nice way of saying that internal communication at TSR had apparently broken down), a crusader class was also being developed for Faiths & Avatars (and which was subsequently reprinted in Player's Option - Spells & Magic), which came out only a few months after FOR10 hit the streets. Given that F&A's crusader was nothing like the one here, and yet had the same name and were set in the same world, something needed to be done.

The result was that F&A notes, in the book's appendix, that the crusader class found here (that is, in Warriors and Priests of the Realms) is officially renamed the "holy crusader." Personally, I just love the idea that you can have a crusader and a holy crusader in the same party; that's got to make for some sort of awkwardness when the characters are comparing what they do.

As it is, the holy crusader (I'll keep using that name here for the sake of clarity) is said to be a recent invention; the book outlines that the gods basically invented this class after the Time of Troubles when they realized that their survival depended on proselytizing, which is kind of funny since the holy crusader seems more focused on defense than on swaying the hearts and minds of people. This class specifically doesn't gather followers and doesn't get to start their own stronghold; rather, they have to pick one existing temple as their "main source of guidance" (despite having the ability to use augury, divination, and commune multiple times per week - shouldn't that be per "tenday" - as they go up in level; this really amplifies the whole issue of "if you can talk to your god directly, and they talk back, is terrestrial guidance really necessary?" so often found in high-fantasy RPGs).

What makes the holy crusader different is that they occupy a space between the generic cleric and the specialty priest. More standardized than specialty priests are, the class is nevertheless defined by deity-specific special abilities. Some of these are fairly mundane, such as holy crusaders of Tyr being able to detect evil at will like a paladin, or holy crusaders of Arvoreen being required to take the sling as a weapon proficiency, but getting double the sling's rate of fire. Several deities offer benefits that are somewhat more expansive, and several of them change the holy crusader's ability to turn undead (i.e. the class's default assumption is that it can turn undead unless a particular deity says they can't, or has them command undead instead).

This is fairly innovative, occupying a niche that's essentially "specialty priest lite," as it presents a class that's still variable by deity, but which has far fewer deviations from a standardized baseline. Here, at least, we get a firm statement about multiclassing and dual-classing, which is that you can't do either with holy crusaders: if you want to play this class, you're single-classed. While there are no racial level limits given (sigh), there's an oddity in that not only is the class open to any race, but apparently the human gods will accept demihuman holy crusaders, while the reserve isn't true: the (few) demihuman gods outlined apparently only accept holy crusaders of the race they're a god of. I mean, I guess that's sort of always been the case for most divine spellcasting characters, but it feels odd to see it expressly acknowledged like this.

But of course, these new classes are just the bonus: the kits are what it's really about.

Insofar as the Warrior kits go, they're exactly what you'd expect if you read the previous volume. Each kit is geographically determined, having a table that overviews most of the information, followed by sub-groupings for areas within that geography to determine basic role-playing information as well as the special advantages and disadvantages of each region's take on that particular kit (though a few of the kits are for a single region only). I'll note that the regions outlined are mostly identical to the previous volume, though a few variances are to be found here and there.

I'll be honest: this part of the book didn't really wow me. That's largely because fighters in general (and most of these kits are made to be compatible with Warrior classes in general, which means they can't really reference ranger- or paladin-specific features where the special advantages and disadvantages are concerned) don't have very much in the way of things that can be tweaked. Spellcasting classes have all sorts of aspects to their magic use that can be altered, and rogues have their special rogue abilities, but fighters simply don't have much in the way of class features.

The end result is that a lot of these kits, in terms of the special abilities and restrictions that they add, tend to go for fairly prosaic options. A lot of them go for the "get a free nonweapon proficiency" route in terms of what benefits they give a character. That's not all of them of course - warriors of Nimbral can cast spells like a bard (of three levels lower) and can even do so in metal armor - but if you didn't use the "optional" proficiency rules, you'll have a lot of kits that need modifying.

Then we come to the priest kits, which are a different kettle of fish altogether.

Whereas everything up until now, in both this book and the previous one, has been kits divvied up by geography, the priest kits - which are actually cleric kits, since the book makes it clear that they're the only class that can take these - are divided up by faith.

What that means is that each of the priest kits essentially modify the generic cleric into something deity-specific. In fact, several deities have two kits, each outlining different aspects of their religion. It's essentially a different take on the same conceptual niche as the aforementioned holy crusader, taking a base class and then making part of their class features vary by deity, but without the wide degree of variation found among specialty priests (though here, things are switched around slightly more broadly than with the holy crusader).

Personally, I love this. While I didn't think much about it back in the day, having a one-size-fits-all class for wildly different gods has become less and less appealing to me over the years. While I still prefer specialty priests for just how far they'll often go in terms of changing things (to the point where I'd love to play in an AD&D 2E game that made specialty priests the only options available for divine spellcasting characters), anything that mixes things up for the cleric the way these kits do is a welcome addition to the game.

Somewhat surprisingly, this isn't where the book ends. There's a brief overview of a few nonweapon proficiencies (less than a half-dozen), and then we get a section on "Shrines, Temples, and Groves." Each of those three locations has their method of creation outlined, along with what powers they have. It's a nice little way of noting how the proverbial houses of the gods aren't sitting around defenseless, waiting to be looted or smashed by enemies of their faith. I had a bit of déjà vu there, as I was certain I'd read that before, but for the life of me I can't remember if it's something I read somewhere else, or if it's from the last time I looked this book over; I suspect the latter but I'm not sure.

Overall, this sourcebook continued the good work of its predecessor. While the Warrior section felt just a bit too same-y, the Priest part more than made up for it, to the point where I'm of the opinion that the latter half of the book justifies the entire thing (although, if you want either holy crusader abilities or cleric kits for gods beyond what's to be found here, you'll need to make them on your own; insofar as I know, this book never received any expansions or support material). It's definitely worthwhile if you want to adventure in the Realms, or even if you want to cherry-pick what's here for your own campaign.

And with that, there's just one more leatherette left...

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Voadam

Legend
Specialty priests for specific FR gods was one of my favorite things from Forgotten Realms Adventures and I enjoyed the follow ups in the 2e FR god books. Of the FOR books I never got, Warriors and Priests was pretty high up on my interest list specifically for more FR god devotee stuff.
 

Alzrius

The EN World kitten
This is the way the series ends.

This is the way the series ends.

This is the way the series ends.

Not with a bang, but with a "meh."


Okay, that's kind of a downer opening to look back at the final leatherette book, FOR12 Demihumans of the Realms, but it's unfortunately not an inaccurate one. While this book wasn't one that I found bad by any stretch of the imagination, it was the weakest of the three Forgotten Realms-focused leatherettes.

As with its predecessors, this is a kit book. But whereas those were focused on geography - for the most part, with the last half of the second book focusing on various religions instead - this one lacks that particular focus. While some of these kits are tied to specific places (such as "Gladiator, Fugitive Hillsfar"), there's no real unifying theme beyond these being specific to elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. They're not even broken up by racial grouping (which to be fair, wouldn't make sense anyway, since more than a few of these can be taken by multiple demihuman races), but simply listed alphabetically from start to finish.

Another way that this book doesn't quite fill the metaphorical shoes of its predecessor volumes is page-count. Whereas the previous two books were one hundred twenty-eight pages in length, FOR12 is only three quarters as long, clocking in at ninety-six pages. Whether or not that was part of the plan from the beginning or if there wasn't enough content for another thirty-two pages will probably never be known. However, there is a joke to be made here about how that missing quarter is due to only three of the class groups getting kits for them: while you'll find Warrior, Wizard, and Rogue kits in this book, there are none for Priests (though I should mention that there's only one for Wizards, so they're only barely here either).

That's by design, of course; the book is very upfront in pointing out that if you want demihuman-specific material with regards to deities in the Forgotten Realms, you should check out Demihuman Deities instead. Personally, I think that makes sense; the change in focus for this book would have made new Priest material rather awkward to introduce compared to what was in Warriors and Priests of the Realms.

Oh, and it's also worth mentioning that there's no new base class here either, in another departure from the format laid down by the previous books.

As for the kits themselves, there's a bit of a notation that needs to be made. We're told in the introduction that some of the kits here are updated/tweaked (and, in some cases, made Realms-specific) versions of kits we saw in the demihuman volumes of the kits found in previous books, mostly the PHBR series from what I can tell. While I haven't done any sort of research as to which kits were updated in this manner or where they're from, this is something I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, no one likes buying the same material again, on the other hand there were a lot of kits I didn't care for in the previous books, so having them edited into something worthwhile is definitely a good thing. I just wish there'd been a table of which kits from which books were given this treatment.

The kits themselves were...alright, I guess. While the mechanics are fairly tight, typically adding a number of small bonuses and penalties to various things rather than introducing anything truly revolutionary, my problem was that there was no real sense of what makes most of these specifically demihuman in nature. What is it that makes an elf, half-elf, dwarf, gnome, or halfling qualified to take the cat burglar kit (which they all can) when a human can't? There's plenty of information about how they have minor non-magical devices that can do incredible things, or how they have no Pick Pockets thief ability because they consider that beneath them, but nothing about what sets this kit apart from humanity?

Ironically, there are a few kits where the book actually manages to go too far in the other direction. A couple of kits are focused not only on a particular demihuman race, but on a particular sub-race, with their coverage sort of making it seem like demihumans of that particular sub-race need to take this kit if they take its parent class, such as the Winged Elf Explorer kit. Obviously, only avariels (winged elves) can take it (if they're fighters, which they need not be), but the description makes it sound like the various advantages and disadvantages of the kit are little different from those of the avariel sub-race itself. It's a tad confusing.

Having said that, the best part of the book (at least for me) was the overview of the various demihuman sub-races that it gives at the beginning of the book. Eschewing presenting the basic information (e.g. ability score adjustments) it instead gives the homelands of each sub-race in the Realms, their allowed classes, allowed multiclass combinations, initial languages they can choose at character creation, the major deities of that particular sub-race, and a list of other AD&D products that present that sub-race in greater detail. It's a very handy reference chart to have, and I can see a lot of players looking it over when deciding if they want to play a demihuman or not.

And that's it. While I wish there'd been more to it, this book is a decent-enough supplement that I can't say it's not worth picking up. But neither is it one I'd particularly recommend, save for the aforementioned list of sub-races. It's a very middle of the road supplement; it'll add some flavor to a demihuman character in the Realms, but only some.

For the last book in this overview, it could have been worse, though it could have been a lot better also.

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Alzrius

The EN World kitten
When I first started this series back at the beginning of the year, I thought I'd be done with it by the end of March. My plan was to write a quick overview every three days or so, and get it all done as a fun little nostalgia project.

Obviously, it took a little bit longer than that.

That was largely due to it being a lot harder to find the time to re-read the books prior to each retrospective than I'd anticipated. Whether it was because of work, personal commitments, or other projects that I was working on, this ended up being a lot closer to a "once a week" thing, and even that was more of an aspiration than a hard-and-fast rule.

Of course, the fact that I ended up writing more than I'd intended for each book contributed to how long it took, also. I enjoy reviewing things, and it was only because I'd given myself permission to be fast and loose with my coverage (there's a reason I didn't make this a "let's read" or a series of proper reviews) that I managed to keep things as short as I did. Even then, more than once I had a post balloon out beyond what I'd initially intended.

Even so, I had a blast going back over these supplements! AD&D 2nd Edition was a game I had a lot of fun with as a kid, and it was a joy to go back over one of its most iconic series of supplements now. Some of the books were more enjoyable than others, and some had some serious nostalgia quality for me whereas others were comparatively recent acquisitions, but all of them were worth looking back on.

And of course, thanks to everyone who took the time to comment in this thread! It's one thing to sit back and re-read an old supplement; it's something else altogether to get to discuss it and share memories with like-minded people. I hope you guys found this to be fun and maybe even a little informative; I know I did.

Now, I suppose, the only question is what series of D&D books I should go over next. :unsure:
 


Stormonu

NeoGrognard
Thanks for the review @Alzrius, it's been fun and informative.

How about going over the 1E AD&D adventure modules - A1 --> WG14? Or if that's too much, maybe the supermodules A1-4 Scourge of the Slavelords, GDQ Queen of the Demonwebs, etc.

Or maybe just the core rulebooks for say 1E or 2E? Or a subset like Player's Option?
 

Staffan

Legend
Another idea would be to expand into splatbook-adjacent setting-specific material. I'm mostly familiar with Dark Sun, and while you did go over the Complete Gladiator's Handbook, that setting also had a lot of other books that went into more depth for certain classes or races: Elves of Athas, Thri-Kreen of Athas, The Will and The Way, Defilers and Preservers, Dune Traders, and Earth Air Fire and Water. I'm sure other settings had similar sourcebooks that could be interesting to go over.
 

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