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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011799" data-attributes="member: 1129">Dezzavold, Fortress of the Drow, is another entry in the Races of Renown series by Green Ronin Press. This isn’t a racial sourcebook like Plot & Poison, but rather, like Corwyl, is a site for players to investigate and explore. Written by Christina Stiles and Steven Trustrum, Dezzavold comes in at 96 black and white pages for $19.95.Like other books by Green Ronin, most of the art is great.  We have fan favorites like Liz Danforth and Caleb Cleveland along with others like Beth Trott and Mike Vilardi among others. All the cartography is hanlded by Hal Mangold and Shawn Brown. While their overview of the fortress is useable, it lacks any artistic style to it. Their map of the Queen’s Fortress, while having scale, is fairly useless as it has no grid and personally, I’m too lazy to put a grid on these entries. It reminds me of the rough maps that Palladium Castles used on several products. Dezzavold is broken into seven chapters and includes an appendix and an index. The seven chapters provide the reader with almost all the tools he’ll need to get started using the product. Dezzavold was founded by exiles and came under threat some time after their founding. Seeking help from the surface elves, they were betrayed and fought a war with the wood elves until other matters came up which caused them to hire mercenaries who eventually betrayed them and took over the city.It’s a little more complicated than that. For instance, the drow that founded this city weren’t necessarily an ‘evil’ branch and were interested in reconciling with their surface brothers. The mercenaries who took over are more akin to the drow from first edition, the drey, in that the females are much more powerful than the males.One thing I didn’t like about the book was the focus on new crunch. Plot and Poison was a huge and great sourcebook. Because this book is supposed to tie into that one, I found it odd that we have not one, but two new core classes, the black heart, a barbarian whose soul is given over to their drey patron, and the netherstrider, survivors who sharpen their claws and teeth to become the ultimate hunter. Each is done okay in terms of game mechanics but I question the inclusion of two brand new classes as opposed to tweaking current classes.With the new monsters, something happened to the game stats. Where they should have hit dice, they have the type and number of hit points and CR is missing for all entries. This happens on all the full monster entries in the front of the book and the back so I don’t know what happened but thankfully, Green Ronin has errata for the crys spider, hound spider and the construct, the mitrhal guardian spider.There are also a lot of PrCs in the book. These start with the Demonican, an arcane spellcaster with reduced spellcasting but the special ability to “Exploit Ability” of an outsider, taking on the outsider’s physical characteristics. One PrC, the Huzzlatarr, is for any non-drow elf, which is essentially, an elf who hunts down drow, which has been done in several other products, and seems a little out of place in a book about a drow fortress. It’s not that the game mechanics are bad or the ideas aren’t interesting, I’m wondering why this isn’t Plot & Poison II with new crunch for just about everything.And then I realize, because a good chunk of the book covers the Dezzavold itself. These entries are a little too short for me. Most of them, especially when dealing with the NPC’s, seem like, “He is here for X.” Very little in terms of personality, history, or using the individual outside of its given context. ON the plus side, this allows them to put in full game mechanics for almost every encounter. Want to know what Sonneviss, a female serpent person’s stats are? No problem. Want to know what Dalsen Diddlehoff, a Halfling merchant’s ability scores are? You’re covered. For me, I found it space wasting. Coverage of the major NPC’s that the party might battle against would be great and coverage of common individuals, which is covered latter in the book, could’ve been eliminated altogether and the GM provided with more role playing tools.The appendix does a nice job of providing a lot of game mechanics for the GM. These range from racial traits for the Drey and Drow, to game stats for the mercenaries who took over the city, The Black Heart of Nyarleth and her daggers. The nice thing about the daggers is that not all of them are drey. We have an interesting cast including a barbarian medusa and a tiefling rogue.For me, I felt that there were too many references to too many books. I can understand the heavy undertones of Plot and Poison, it’s a drow sourcebook after all, but then they went back and provided a lot of details in abbreviated format found in that book. I felt that you’d have to own at minimum, Plot and Poison, Wood Elves, and Corwyl, to get the most out of this product. Heck ,several dwarf NPC’s have equipment from Hammer & Helm. For those looking to flesh out and expand a drow fortress, Dezzavold provides all the tools you need.</blockquote>

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