Complete Monstrous Fighter's Compendium
The Complete Monstrous Fighter's Compendium is a player option sourcebook providing races, classes, and other options for players that want to play monster race characters. The book draws from the world of Elara, the campaign setting of the Green Races supplement and the Dragon Elves e-card game.
The Complete Monstrous Fighter's Compendium is published by Fast Forward Entertainment. Contributing authors include Timothy Brown, Johnathan Cassie, Kurt Hausheer, David Lyons, W. Jason Peck, Jarad Fennell, M.K. McArtor, Gary McBride, Steve Miller, Christoffer Trossen, and James M. Ward.
A First Look
The Complete Monstrous Fighter's Compendium is a 128 page hardbound book priced at $24.99 US. This ties with Enchanted Locations: Crypts & Tombs (also by Fast Forward) for the most expensive hardbound book on a per-page basis that I have reviewed. Unforutanately, this seems to be part of a larger trend. Small hardbound books are becoming more common in the d20 marketplace, where at one time, d20 books under 160 or so pages would be exclusively softback.
The cover of the book has the same grainy red background that Fast Forward uses for all of its hardbound books. The front cover panel has a simple illustration of a coat of arms depicting a pair of crossed sabers in front of a triangle, drawn in gold lines.
The interior is black-and-white. The interior illustrations vary in quality from mediocre to good. Some of the art is replicated for Green Races and Dragon Elves, but the reproductions from Dragon Elves are of higher quality than the ones that appeared in Rings of Power.
The interior font size is conservative, and the header font simple and clear. The paragraphs and sentences are single-spaces. Overall, the book makes good use of space.
A Deeper Look
The book is split into chapters titled by subject matter: Introduction, Races, Classes, New Skills, New Feats, Equipment, Spells, and Playing the Green Races.
The introduction chapter includes a overview of the world of Elara, with a brief overview of the geography and history. Most of the elements of the world are familiar to D&D settings: elves, humans, dragons, dwarves, as well as the green races: orcs, goblins, trolls, and other "evil" or "green" races.
Most of the history focuses on the development of the human races and the political struggles of the elves. The struggles of the elves eventually leads to a pact with the dragons which gives each a bit of the other's power. This, in turn, leads to the dragons manipulating the "green" races into moving into the lands of the humans and the elves.
Surprisingly little is said about the history of the green races themselves. For that, you must delve into the Green Races sourcebook.
The races chapter is really the heart of the book. PHB-style descriptions are provided for the various races of the world of Elara, including such details as personality, physical descriptions, relations, lands, religion, and names as well as racial trait mechanics.
These races are variants of many of the stock humanoid and monstrous races of the D&D game, both good and "green". There are, however, some small differences between these races and the standard races, mainly in the area of skill bonuses. However, there are some other modifiers, such as armor bonuses for the northern elves, who are as a race slowly morphing and becoming more dragon-like. More extreme additions to some races include bonus feat and skill points for derro (much like humans), and immunities to dragon-breath (for DragonGoblins, a spin off of goblinkind that drinks the blood of dragons.)
The most significant omission from the racial descriptions is level modifiers for any of the races. You might assume that it is safe to use the standard level modifiers from the DMG or other book (such as Savage Species. However, the races have benefits over their standard counterparts, even humans, so many of the level modifiers would likely be inaccurate. It may take a little DM adjudication to use these races.
A more minor problem is that many of the races have odd statistic modifiers, violating the "even ability modifiers only" convention of the d20 system. As such, the DM may find that some of the races are easy to min/max attribute sets with unless some of the modifiers are tweaked.
A good part of the classes chapter discusses the existing classes in the core books. Each class has one or more paragraphs discussing how the class fits into the Elara setting, including which classes are particularly appropriate for which races, and what prestige classes (in this book and in the Green Races book the class fits with.
After what I considered a pretty poor showing in Green Races (which had core classes with arbitrary attack modifier progressions, omitted skill lists, and nonsensical feat and class ability selections), I was a little disheartened when I saw that this book contained new core classes as well. Fortunately, these classes seemed to be laid out correctly with all the information you need to play them, and there is only one break with convention as far as advancement schemes go (one class, the pikeman, uses a nonstandard BAB progression.)
The four new core classes are:
-Freak: Freaks are members of the green races with strange mutations. Freaks get beneficial mutations as they advance, as well as deformities. Also, freaks have access to a small number of divine spells similar to a paladin or ranger.
-Pikeman: As the name suggests, the pikeman is a warrior-type with a specialization in pole-weapons. The pikeman receives a number of abilities that provide benefits only when used as part of a unit of pikemen, some of them only beneficial if the entire unit uses the stance. This is a bit problematic in the typical D&D game, as there are too few characters of a high enough level to realistically provide a unit for the character to belong to. This, coupled with the nonstandard BAB progression, makes the class the least compelling in the book, and if one wants pike maneuvers, it can be much better accomplished with a feat chain.
-Tunnel rat:The tunnel rate is a member of the green races that is specialized in digging tunnels and fighting in confined spaces.
-Twisted: Sort of the green races' answer to a paladin, the twisted is touched by the dark gods of the green races. The twisted are good fighters, and slowly get spells and abilities not unlike a paladin, but a bit darker in nature. In actuality, when contrasted with the paladin, the twisted seems a little weak, especially at low levels.
Overall, the freak and the twisted might be suitable classes, an answer to the idea of a psuedo magical warrior type like a paladin or ranger. However, I feel that the tunnel rat and the pikeman are little more than specialized fighters whose concept may be realized by a fighter with the proper feat chains.
The prestige classes are a bit more sensible in concept, mostly being specialized concepts with special roles within the tribes of the green races. Unfortunately, some of them resort to ad hoc or nonstandard save progressions.
-Chief's Fist: Chief's Fists are the nominally loyal bodyguards and right-hand-men of chiefs of the green races. Chief's fists gain abilities that help them protect their charge, as well as to inspire fear.
-Clan Leader: The clan leader is the leader of a green races clan. Special abilities include a generous feat progression and abilities to lead and inspire.
-Driven Spiritualist: The text describes the driven spiritualist as a specialist in penetrating defenses, but the class abilities seem to be more oriented towards turnabouts, e.g., ambushing would be ambushers and reflecting attack damage. The class uses a few terms that are not familiar d20 system terms such as "mesmerized", which will leave you guessing as to the actual effect. The class also lists some abilities that do not appear on the summary
-Fortress Masters: The characters are specialists in using magic and mundane knowledge to defend and sustain fortifications. The class has its own spellcasting progression and also gains bonus spells (individual spells, not caster levels) to existing classes, but can only use these bonus spells using the runic casting system described later in the book. In addition, the class has very generous save and attack progressions (too generous as it has ALL good save and attack progressions) and class abilities including bonus feats, proficiency with siege engines, and magic abilities to aid in the defense of fortifications.
-Geomantic engineer: The geomantic engineer consorts with powerful spirits of the earth summoned through sacrifice, and can use these spirits to weaken or protect stone structures. The class also has its own spellcasting progression and a good attack progression.
-Hammerfist: The hammerfist is a specialized duergar smith with the rudimentary ability to imbue weapons they wield or create with magical abilities.
-Keeper of the Song: The keeper of the song is a member of one of the green races that acts as a historian and oral lore-keeper for its people. The class has its own spellcasting progression, and has class abilities that are basically modestly tweaked versions of bard abilities, such as a fairly powerful ability to inspire frenzy, which grants allies an ability much like a barbarian rage. The basic concept of this class is close enough to the core bard that perhaps it would have been better expressed as a collection of bard-appropriate feats.
-Naturalist: Naturalists are experts at nature, but unlike druids are good fighters instead of spellcasters. In addition to bonuses to nature-related skills, naturalists gains a number of "nature lore" abilities as they advance. These abilities let the naturalist concoct a number of useful items (many of them poisons) from natural substances.
-Road warrior: The road warrior is alternately a guardian or highwayman/bandit that roams the roads of Elara. Similar to the naturalist, road warriors gains a number of feat-like "secrets of the road" as they advance that benefit them in their trade.
-Weaponmaster: Unlike weaponmaster type characters in other products, this weaponmaster strives to master many types of weapons. The character gains "weapon styles" with five different types of weapons that given them feat like benefits, AND the character gains general feats at every odd level, making this class unquestionably better than the fighter. In addition, the class ability table lists no ability for 10th level.
-Woodsman: The woodsman is sort of a "super ranger" that receives wilderness abilities as ell as abilities like sneak attack. This class is too much like a "better" version of a ranger for my comfort, and some abilities are a little generous (such as a cover tracks ability that automatically is successful in hiding the tracks of the whole party, instead of providing a modifier to the DC of the check.)
-Zerkh: The Zerkh is a strange sort of hybrid between the barbarian and the fighter... and again, is way too generous with the abilities. The zerkh gets the best of both fighter and barbarian abilities as well as strength bonuses and an escalating hit dice.
As can be seen, some of the classes are suitable and playable, much more so than the ones in Green Races, but some are a bit generous and conceputally weak, being little more than powered up versions of core classes.
The book introduces 8 new skills: artillerist, handle large animal, handle large avian, inscribe power runes, oration, swinging, tactics, and tunneling. Arguably, many of these skills should have been tucked into knowledge or profession categories, and oration might be a perform category, but at least the book does bother to add these skills to the existing classes (which many books that engage in such proliferation of skills miss out on.) Handle large animal and handle large avian are probably too specific to warrant their own skills, or at best might require feats that allow the use of handle animal in these capacities.
Inscribe power runes takes on the role more typically given to feats. It allows a character to inscribe a spell as a rune. The check is easy (DC 5+spell level), but inscribing a spell in this way allows the character to escalate the power of a spell drastically (+1 DC per 3 ranks in the skill.)
The book introduces a number of new feats. Many of the feats are specific to classes like fighter, barbarian, and/or rogue. Many of the feats are pretty reasonable, such as a feat chain that gives bonuses to AC, saves, and culminates with a 1 point DR (though it doesn't call it DR and sort of reinvents the mechanic.) Others are powerful and/or generous. Devout Champion, for example, grants the character access to domain spells as if the character were a cleric with a class level equal to the character's level!
The equipment section provides a variety of new items appropriate to the green races. For the most part, they are pretty reasonable. Normal equipment includes items such as unique weapons, torture gear, fungus beer, anti-troll acid darts, and goblin rockets. Magic items include the likes of troll bone blades (allows the wielder to regenerate) and rods of slave control. Some items are powerful, but for the most part commensurately price. A few items fall outside the purview of the normal item creation rules, such as a potion that induces a deep trance that effectively acts like a commune spell.
The spells section includes 6 combat oriented spells, doing things like creating illusory soldiers or adding elemental damage to weapons. Overall, the spells are reasonable.
The last section is entitled Playing the Green Races, and includes a variety of sundry details for playing green races characters. This includes details on religion (including deities and sphres), physical details (such as height, weight, and aging), details on conflicts in the setting and on roleplaying members of the green races.
Conclusion
The Complete Monstrous Fighter's Compendium is an improvement over the Green Races campaign setting book and includes many of the important details glossed over in that book. If you are interested in running a game in the Green Races campaign setting, you should consider this book.
Rules-wise, the book is a mixed bag. Most of the entries are playable, but have problems with d20 System conventions, balance, and concept. The omission of ECLs is the single biggest stumbling block to using this book for monstrous campaigning.
If you are looking for a guide to monstrous campaigning, there are some decent ideas here, but in general AEG's Monster does a better job. To top it off, this book comes at a much higher premium and has a much more mediocre presentation.
Overall Grade: D
-Alan D. Kohler
