Constructs

[Messageboard Golem]

Golems wait silently in dungeon corridors, ready to annihilate unwary adventurers who dare defile their former master's sanctum. Shield guardians follow their owners faithfully, and ready to interpose themselves between the holder of their amulet and anything that would bring him harm. Homunculi fly forth, powered by their creator's lifeblood into a grotesque mockery of life. All of these are constructs, artificial life forms brought into the world by rituals long secreted away in the corners of occult libraries, in the ruins of mighty magical empires and the personal notes of spellcasters with the curiosity to explore this field of arcane lore.

 

[Psion]

Constructs

The Encyclopaedia Arcane series of books by Mongoose Publishing provides players and GMs with new options for arcane spellcasters. Previous volumes in this series include Demonology: The Dark Road, Necromancy: Beyond the Grave, and Chaos Magic: Wild Sorcery.

Constructs (subtitled It is Alive) focuses on the craft of making animated guardians and assistants for arcane spellcasters.

A First Look

Constructs is a 64 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $14.95 US. This is in keeping with Mongoose's past releases in the Encyclopaedia Arcane series. This provides a rate of about 23 cents per page, which is very typical for a book of this size. The book also makes use of the inside back cover for the "summary checklist" that Mongoose books typically include.

The cover is color, with a fairly decent picture by Ralph Horsely depicting a green golem breaking free from its chains while a very worried looking man looks on.

The interior is black and white except for one color picture on the inside of the front cover. The interior artwork is fairly nice, mostly with familiar talents who have already had work in other Mongoose books such as Danilo Moretti, Eric Lofgren, and Rick Otey.

The typeface is about average. There are many tables and charts, and all are decently organized. The book has about average value for the current market based on content delivered for the price.

A Deeper Look

Constructs is written by a new talent, Alejandro Melchor. Though I have only seen one product by Alejandro to date, it was a pretty small product to judge by: Mongoose's Ships of War.

Constructs is a bit different from prior books in the series. It has no new classes. In fact is has relatively little in the way of new character options: there are no new feats and relatively few new spells.

What is does have is a well developed system for creating constructs. The system uses existing feats and skills such as the craft wondrous items and craft magic arms & armor feats and various craft skills. Essentially, much of the material in the book is a reverse engineering of the stats of golems and other constructs in the Monster Manual, and then it creates a system out of that to provide the GM or player with a ton of options for making construct creatures.

The system divides Constructs into three basic types: Golems, Automata, and Simulacra.

Golems are Constructs made of a singular material much as is the case of the Golems in the 3e Monster Manual. Materils range from wood to steel, gold, or diamond. Unfortunately, the materials of the core d20 system golem – iron, stone, and clay – are not included. This is unfortunate, as these rules could have been used to make create variants with different sizes and capabilities. The golems in Constructs share many of the characteristics of those golems. They are only vulnerable to very few spells, though what spells vary by the type of material.

Automata are creatures that have more complex clockwork components, but lack the immunity to magic of golems. Of Constructs defined in the d20 system core rules, Automata are exemplified by the shield guardians, but the book provides a variety of different Automata designs.

Simulacra are a totally different sort of creature, and are typically made of living material like flesh and blood. Simulacra are created in game terms by applying one of a variety of templates to a given base creature. Templates vary in complexity and the type of creature you can apply it to. For example, a homunculus is a simple creature made from its masters blood. A mockery is a "cheap copy" of an existing creature with no intelligence, which may be applied to an animal, humanoid, monstrous humanoid, plant, or vermin. An eidolon is a construct that is actually better than the base creature it mimics. The resulting creatures are all Constructs, but can have intelligence.

When designing a Construct, the player or GM may choose the size of the creature and its type. Type is material in the case of golems, one of several function oriented designs (like wilderness scout or assassin) if an automata, or the template and base creature type and template if a simulacra. That gives you the basic characteristics of the creature such as hit dice, AC, attacks, and so forth. It also gives you details important to the construction of the construct, such as the required skill checks, Construction Points (CP), Body Rating (BR), and DCs. CPs and BR are used to determine cost and time to make the construct.

In addition to these basic factors, the designer may add other characteristics to the Construct. Constructs may have "feats", deficiencies, and special weapons that alter their abilities and CP (and thus price). The feats in this case are characteristics that are added to the golem. These may be real feats as per the core rules, or may be things like proficiency with a melee weapon, extra limbs, improved AC, and so forth.

In addition to that, constructs have a number of special ability "slots" according to their type, and more can be added by purchasing "feats." Each of these gives a special attack or special quality to the golem. For example, you can make an your golem emit a lightning storm or give your homunculus the ability to dwell in a pocket dimension until you call it forth.

In addition to the system parts, there are rules for maintenance and repair of constructs, including a few spells for that purpose.

Conclusion

Somehow, I think that many players will pass this up because Constructs aren't as popular an idea as demonology or necromancy. This is somewhat unfortunate, because fantasy and SF literature and entertainment is rife with these sorts of creatures. As I read this book, my head was swimming with images of these formative influences: Shelly's Frankenstein's Monster, the troops of Urza and Mishra in the Magic the Gathering CCG, as well as the alchemical creations of the wizards in Vance's classic Dying Earth books. This is good stuff!

Alejandro's system seems thoughtful and well-written. It should serve as a useful toolkit to come up with a variety of allies and opponents for the PCs. Some people don't like the toolkit approach, but I think this is a wonderful springboard for campaign ideas.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Encyclopaedia Arcane: Constructs is written by Alejandro Melchor and published by Mongoose Publishing. Subtitled “It is Alive!”, this 64-page softcover sourcebook retails for $14.95.

First Blood
The fourth book in Mongoose’s Encyclopaedia Arcane series, Encyclopaedia Arcane: Constructs is designed to provide players and Games Masters all the information they need to design and build magical constructs for their d20 fantasy game: golems, automata, and simulacra. If you’ve ever wanted Frankenstein to be your character’s sidekick, or wanted to confront your players with an evil Geppeto and his fiendish creation Pinnochio, you may find the materials, methods, and rituals described in this supplement useful.

Fantasy fiction is full of the strange and fearsome magical creations that great wizards – and the occasional divine spellcaster -- have created in their labs, but the exact mechanics of this creation process has never been divulged in core gaming material. Constructs lays out the details of different creation rituals with their magical (and game mechanic) requirements, along with the important elements of the magical laboratory required for a d20 character or NPC to create a magical creature. The focus is on wizards, but the mechanics could be easily adapted to any other type of spellcaster.

A magical construct is created using a Construction Point (CP) mechanic. The base construct’s type and size determines its base CP cost of creation; this CP is adjusted as the construct is modified by adding feats, abilities, or materials, or reduced in cost by compensating with deficiencies (eliminating base abilities, handicapping, and the like). The final CP cost for the construct is then converted by a simple formula into an experience point requirement and a cost in gold pieces, and then the appropriate ritual can begin to infuse the creation with life.

Three types of constructs are examined in detail: golems, automata, and simulacra (a fourth type, puppets, is mentioned but conspicuously absent from the text). Golems are semi-autonomous creations infused with elemental spirits. Constructs provides the base statistics and creation mechanics for twelve types of golems: Wood, Bone, Shell, Obsidian, Crystal, Diamond, Shard, Gold, Steel, Bronze, Mithral, and Adamantine. Automata are created and programmed for a specific purpose – like the Wilderness Scout, Animal Companion, or Assassin. Simulacra are simulations of human form, ranging from the rough Homunculus to a better-than-human Eidolon.

Constructs also provides a host of construct-specific feats, deficiencies, special weapons, and special abilities that may be incorporated into the creation. Costs and methods of construct repair and reactivation are covered. There is also a special GM section, “Do Golems Dream of Elemental Sheep?”, which discusses the uses and applications of various magical constructs in the campaign.

Critical Hits
Constructs is a dual-purpose tool. It can provide the player with some useful ideas and game mechanics to customize his wizard character, while at the same time providing the Games Master will and ability not only to create unique NPCs but also interesting foes for his players. Constructs works directly with the base game mechanics – no special feats or skills required here – and is filled with excellent examples of how the process works. It is quite easy to price and build a reasonable construct, and the prices are high enough that only the highest-level characters will be running around with shield guardian protectors.

Critical Misses
Constructs is another of the Encyclopaedia Arcane series that could really be expanded further – there are certainly lots more base types of golems, for instance, that need base cost tables. Clay, Earth, Iron, and Flesh golems are conspicuously absent (though this may be due to Open Game License issues). The absence of the puppet, mentioned in the introduction, is also distressing – one wonders if there is more material out there that could make a worthwhile expansion to this supplement.

Coup de Grace
Encyclopaedia Arcane: Constructs provides its game mechanics as Open Content, though all the rest of its names and text are product identity. It provides a simple and elegant system for the creation of magical constructs that works seamlessly with the core rules system, though there are some distressing absences in the construct list. Player and GMs alike can find some fun ideas that will balance well with their campaign in these pages.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.