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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tuerny" data-source="post: 2009489" data-attributes="member: 674">Death: Guardian of the Gate is the second .pdf produced by Dark Quest Games as a development studio for Natural 20 Press. D:GotG is designed to provide a comprehensive and detailed church that is easily inserted into most campaigns. While it largely succeeds in being comprehensive, its ease of insertion does not quite what it should be. Luckily, much of the material is easily usable with other death gods. It would be very easy to steal bits and pieces from this product to help reinforce the depth of one of one of your own death gods.   Layout:     Death: Guardian of the Gate is a seventy-two pages, black and white, .pdf document. It is organized into eleven chapters with a table of contents in the front and, like most Natural 20 Products thus far, lacks an index. The art is evocative and well drawn, capturing the feeling of the material very well. The document is organized very well with clear sections and subsections.     The .pdf bookmark function is not properly implemented. For the first six chapters are organized well, with divisions by chapter, topic, and subtopic with only minor errors in spacing and capitalization. Unfortunately, the bookmark function does not cover chapters seven through eleven.  Chapter One: “The Lady Pale Herself” Chapter One introduces the deity around which this book is centered, providing a combination of fiction and prose to explain how she came to be and her general attitudes, options, and beliefs. Chapter Two: “The Priesthood” Chapter Two introduces the Lady Pale’s priesthood, going into great depth of detail about who and what the priests are. Everything from age and physical appearance, to dress, to dietary requirement, to the church hierarchy is discussed.  Also introduced are two prestige classes associated with death: the Lady’s Chosen, those who are chosen to take the battle against death to the next level in the name of the Lady, and the Shade Wardens, those who are callously devoted to the exploration and avoidance of death. While the presence of the Lady’s Chosen makes sense, why the Shade Warden is here is a little less clear. Its connection with the Lady Pale is not mention at all in the text and in many ways it appears to run counter to its aims. In of itself it is a good prestige class, but its lack of purpose within the confines of the product somewhat detract from that. The Lady’s Chosen is properly explained but suffers from being somewhat overpowered. As it stands there is little reason for a cleric of the Lady Pale not to take this prestige class. It has everything a cleric has and more. Chapter Three: “Mental Attitudes”     Chapter Three describes the attitudes of the priesthood and the Lady Pale on drugs, art, language, music, entertainment, communication, and on education. As a subsection of the material on education are three locations that serve as centers for education by the servants of the Lady Pale. Chapter Four: “The Priesthood”     Yes, Chapter Four is named, just like Chapter Two, “The Priesthood.” It retains the same name as Chapter Two and indeed, does cover the Priesthood, but one can’t help but wonder why exactly if both of the chapters shared the same topic why they weren’t merged, or if that was seen as too cumbersome, why they were not given different titles to avoid confusion.     Chapter 4 discusses more of the game world aspects of the priesthood. Nine orders and the prestige classes associated with them are introduced. Many of these prestige classes are strongly associated with one particular core class, though members of many classes can easily enter a few, such as the Harrowed.     Most of the prestige classes in this chapter would be fairly balanced if it were not for the ease that one could gain entrance into them. Most of them could be easily entered into at second or third level. The Mysteries, which is a prestige class dedicated to arcane casters who serve the Pale Lady, gains a number of special abilities on top of normal spellcasting progression and 4 skill points per level, an average attack progression, and good fortitude and will saves. Beyond this expression of lack of knowledge in regards to the d20 system, the prestige classes are largely good. Most of them possess a flavor that is both interesting and appropriate to the faith. If their entry requirements were redesigned in order to facilitate access at a more reasonable level (such as 5th or 6th) they would make a good addition to a campaign. Chapter Five: “Objects”     Chapter Five introduces objects associated with the faith, with a particular focus on magical items and relics. Most of the magic items are of moderate power, but a few of them are of great power. These items of greater power are, in general, listed as being priceless, which causes somewhat of a problem for potential GMs as it somewhat limits their ability to maintain a balanced amount of magic in the campaign based on the gold piece limits presented in the DMG.     The holy symbol of the Lady Pale is also introduced. Unfortunately it appears to have further rules issues as, despite obviously being a magic item, it lacks a gp cost and even goes so far as to imply that all priests of the Lady Pale have one, which upsets the balance that first level characters have in regards to magical objects.Chapter Six: “Myths, Rituals, and Legends”     Chapter Six introduces, as its chapter header indicates, the myths, rituals, and legends of the faithful of the Lady Pale. Included in this chapter are in-depth explanations are given for each of the major rituals that the priesthood is concerned with, an explanation of the calendar the priesthood uses, a number of true ritual spells along the lines of those in Relics and Rituals 1 that are associated with these rituals, and a pair of myths important to the faith.    This chapter provides a good basis for how the priests of the Lady Pale interact with the faithful and the community around them.  The myths are interesting and provide insight into how the Lady Pale interacts with the world. Chapter Seven: “Personas and Magic”     Chapter Seven introduces important modern and historical figures in the faith of the Pale Lady as well as spells that she grants, and how certain spells appear when cast by the faithful. This section follows the trend that is found in the rest of the book. The fluff and descriptive material is good but the d20 material needs definite work. The personas presented provide a good representation of important NPCs that can be used for the Church. The spells in Chapter Seven range from balanced to overpowered. Cutting the Cord is more powerful than power word: kill yet it is two levels lower. Healing Breath is a 4th level spell that is identical to cure critical wounds except for it caps healing at +10 rather than +20. In exchange it purifies all natural and magical poisons and diseases and their effects, which basically makes it a combination of two 4th level spells and a 3rd level spell. Most of the other spells are similar in scope and power level, with a few being more in line with what is appropriate for their level.Chapter Eight: “Story”, Chapter Nine “Hymn”, Chapter Ten: “Great Library”, and Chapter Eleven: “A Final Revelation” provide short, interesting bits of story information that help to expand the depth and flavor of the Pale Lady’s faith. Ending the book are the author’s Afterthoughts.     I really wanted to like Death: Guardian of the Gate. Upon first looking through it looked great. It was evocative, flavorful, and definitely captured the feel of a deity and priesthood dedicated to a good deity of death. Unfortunately further perusal has led to the revelation of deeper flaws. While the flavor text, fiction, and description of the priesthoods is good stuff the mechanical information shows an incomplete understanding of the d20 system. So basically whether you should get this or not will be determined by one question: Is having a very detailed and interesting priesthood worth having to fix all the mechanical material within it? If that answer is yes then I heartily recommend it. If the answer is no then you probably will want to pass. Edit: Upon further investigation, I have found that the lack of a fully working bookmark function is only found in the east to print version of Death: Guardian of the Gate.The larger, prettier version of the Death has a fully working bookmark fuction.</blockquote>

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