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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2011371" data-attributes="member: 172">Corwyl: Village of the Wood ElvesCorwyl: Village of the Wood Elves is a setting resource designed as something of a adjunct and follow up to the outstanding Bow & Blade book by Green Ronin. Like that book, Corwyl is part of Green Ronin's Races of Renown series. The book is written by Christina Styles and Patrick Sweeny.A First LookCorwyl: Village of the Wood Elves is a 96-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $19.95.The cover of the book is illustrated by James Ryman and depicts a variety of characters in a Lothlorien-like elven tree-village.The interior is black and white and includes the work of Andrew Baker, Jenifer Meyer, Johnathan Kirtz, Stephanie Pui-Man Law & Liz Danforth. Meyer and Law have long been favorites of mine, especially when in comes to the elven or fey look. Baker and Kirtz works are a welcome addition to the talents that graced Bow & Blade.A Deeper LookCorwyl is a village setting with a lot of mechanical add-ons used to support it. In fact, the book seems to use its own material more than that in Bow & Blade, though it does use that book in some places.The book is divided into six chapters. The first is an overwiew and history of the village. The second and third are new rules materials: classes, feats, spells, and the like. The fourth details important individuals in Corwyl, the fifth describes the village itself, including statistics for villagers, and the sixth covers outyling regions. An appendix also provides a quick reference to NPCs elsewhere in the book, even touching on secrets that some characters keep.The village itself has a history of bitter conflict with a drow elf village, [iDezzavold[/i], for which there is a book similar to this one forthcoming. The most interesting aspects of the village described here are the birth and memory trees. The birth trees are planted at the elf's birth, and is shaped into a dwelling. By the time they are ready to marry, the elf and spouse live in one (or possibly, both) of the trees that were planted at their birth. Memory trees, on the other hand, are planted on the grave of an elf who has passed and the spirit of the elf can dwell within.The first rules aspects appear in the first chapter, including new items and new pets the coshee and kanershee. The coshee is one of many open game content items in the book, in this case drawn from the Tome of Horrors (which in turn, drew the creature from early AD&D books.)The second chapter introduces new classes, of both the core and prestige variety. The new core classes are the ancestral speaker and the Terellian Knight. As frequent readers of my reviews may well know, I am not too fond of new core classes unless they are well justified as an occupation a starting character would do distinct from existing classes.Usually spellcasting classes get off easiest with me, and it is easy to create a whole new magic tradition. Ancestral speaker is a spontanous divine caster which has few known spells but many domains (for spells only). This is a nice distinctive class, if you don't happen to own Green Ronin's Shaman's Handbook. A close look at the ancestral speaker reveals that is really a slightly tweaked version of the 3.5 update of the shaman.Though I would have preferred that it be more consistent with the existing shaman (or differences be achieved via feats and other selection), it's not a bad adaptation. It focuses more on the concept of the ancestor spirit vice the animal spirit (to include grabbing some "class" domains OGC from Mongoose's Encylopaedia Divine: Shamans for this purpose), and the class gets new domains faster in exchange for lacking the domain abilities. This is a nice adaptation because, as I noticed when running some in the game, the limited spell selection of low level shamans leave them a little inflexible.The Terellian Knight is essentially a slightly tweaked fighter/ranger type that exclusively focuses on two weapon fighting and lacks spells. I feel that this class, especially given a description somewhat like an exclusive fraternity, deserved to be a prestige class or (given that one of their major features in a feat chain in the next chapter), a feat chain.The prestige classes included are the animal master and the tree maiden. Both classes have a vareity of class abilities and their own (4 spell level) spellcasting advancement.The third chapter includes new skills, feats, and spells. A few of the feats are drawn from other sources (such as the Shaman's Handbook.) The forest sense feat, which is a central class feature of the Terellian knight, give the elf the sort of abilities with nature that they are often attributed in literature; there are four parts to this feat that are successively more potent.On feat that appears abusive on the surface is tree-linked. This feat, once taken, provides additional benefits as the elf ages without further feat costs. While in theory this might be a problem, it might not be in practice because in my experience, few NPCs play long enough to take advantage of later stages of the feat, though it could cause a minor hiccup in the power of aged NPCs.There is a nice selection of new spells, many of them pertinent repeats of the Shaman's Handbook or Bow & Blade such as Canopy Walk. New spells I have not seen before include the Summon Hero chain of spells for ancestral speakers, though those may be derived from a similar singular spell in Relics & Rituals (which is in the OGL section 15.)Chapters 4 and 5 details NPCs of the village of Corwyl, focusing on the rulers and common folk of Corwyl respectively. The fifth chapter also has a map of the village with a key showing the normal locations of all the villagers. The descriptions are detailed, with half a page to a page of detail on each one, with a complete background along with a stat block. Some also have "interaction seeds" that describe situations in which the NPC might interact with the PCs and possibly lead them into adventures. The rulers chapter also includes statistics for the spirit guides that remain to advice the ruler of Corwyl.Sidebars in the chapters provide further rules material where appropriate to support the characters. Many of these are replicated from some other sources (mainly Bow & Blade), though in some cases more extensive sources are not replicated (e.g., there is a soul archer spriti guide in the book; the full class is not replicated and his abilities aren't fully explained.)The sixth chapter is somewhat brief, and contains details of the surrounding region, including a small map, a few location descriptions, and a few NPCs, including a greater treant (with a sidebar describing specifics of such a creature.)A short appendix provides a list of all the NPCs in and around Corwyl described in this book. The listing includes class and level, relationships, and secrets described in the character's description. This is a nice feature and should help GMs navigate the situation in the valley that much better.ConclusionsCorwyl is a very different product. It's like showing you a living example of how various sources can be synthesized into a singular useful setting element. But the authors do you the favor of collecting some of the best material and do the work of placing it in the setting for you. Corwyl would make a great community to drop in as a sample or stopover in elvish lands, as well as for the basis of a campaign.As stated, I do think that some of the decisions regarding classes could have been more elegantly done, especially with respect to those who already own many Green Ronin products.Overall Grade: B -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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