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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011515" data-attributes="member: 1129">I almost think that the Scarred Lands have lost their innovation. Now don’t get me wrong, a war between titans and gods certainly isn’t new, but the way the setting originally handled many things new to third edition was certainly original. Now it seems that most of the books are just a nod and are the dreaded word, interesting.Take Edge of Infinity. This book details the planes of the Scarred Lands setting. This is a great idea as the planes here have only really been hinted at and never delved into. Turns out its just a mediocre book with a few redeeming features. I hate to say it that way because it’s like dismissing the authors’ work but that’s how I feel when I read it.Let’s take a look at The Divine & The Defeated for a second. “Tied to the living, thinking beings of Scarn, the gods began to feel twinges of pain and suffering every time a titan slew a mortal.” Interesting right? Not quite the cause to go to war though as another section shows that. “After an incident involving Mesos’ magic cloak, the enraged titan struck back at the Jester, stripping him of his divine powers and cutting off his connection to his followers.” Well, that was enough and Hedrada convinced the other gods that now was the time for war.Or was it? Let’s flash forward to Edge of Infinity. “The gods believed rightly that the titans’ power was tied to Scarn itself. If they could somehow sever the tie between the two, perhaps they could obtain the titan’s power for themselves and escape their planar realms. The Divine War was thus an effort by the gods to regain their liberty through the acquisition of the power inherent in Scarn.”Revisionist history, even in a fantasy setting, sucks.I had to put the book down for a couple of days after that. I’ve read all the SL books and enjoyed many of them. I’ve run a few campaigns in the setting, but have found it more and more difficult as books continue to expand the age of the setting and change some of the fundamental issues of the setting. This was just another example of a huge part of the back story being changed for no good reason. Anyway, after a while, I came back to the book. The first few sections were like a poor man’s Manual of the Planes. They cover the Fundamental Planes, which are in essence the negative and positive plane and the elemental planes. Apparently somewhere along the way, the djinni have been freed. Now in Echoes of the Past, there is a timeline that shows the djinni being freed from their prison. I assume that’s taken place off stage. Bad enough for this to happen, but to happen off stage like this is poor fantasy fiction.After that, the Occult Planes are covered. Once again, I felt like I was reading a SL book of material already out there. Here we get Ethereal, Astral, Shadow and Dream. It’s like reading about those planes in another book but they’re missing something.Then I realize what it is. First off, there are no maps. Of anything. Now I’m not expecting a whole plane to be mapped out, but to be useful right off the table, some maps of some local in the infinite can get the ball rolling. There are also no detailed game statistics for the NPC’s here. There are comments about how they fit one type of creature with the following modifications, but that’s only half the job in my opinion. Providing more characters and game stats for those characters would once again, give the GM more use of the product right away.When I look over the Divine Planes, I find myself once again, feeling that I’m reading a SL Manual of the Planes. The Mitrhil Heaven? The Iron Hells? The Pestilential Abyss? Each section is like the previous in that it has planar traits, most of which are almost always the same. This includes normal gravity and time, with an infinite size as well as having domain spells be maximized and empowered. One of the nice things is the section on the Entities. Most of these sections include the gods and demi-gods that make up the notable inhabitants of the realm and end with a reference “is further described in The Divine and the Defeated” but there are some that are just powerful or unknown characters. Sometimes though, it gives more information about those demi-gods mentioned but not heavily detailed like Trelu, the demigod of form and artistry.One of the saving graces for the book, was the Zodiacal Planes. These are more like mini-planes that corospond to the various Zodiac signs in the stars and are fairly easy to get to, but can only be traveled to when that sign is ascendant, something that occurs only during the month that the sign is associated with.These planes start with The Fastness of Turros the Eternal, one of the few towers that survives the ravages of the titan Kadum and end with the Duality of Drachys, a demi-plane ruled by a two-headed gold dragon. The nice thing about these mini-planes is that the entities that reside there often can provide aid of one sort or another to those who petition them. Sometimes this is straight information but as in the case of The House of Blades, sometimes a physical item, even a weapon. This provides a lot of utility that isn’t covered by one of the core Dungeons & Dragons books.Another section that does well is the game mechanics. The first appendix covers feats, magic items, and a single spell. My favorite item is the Crystal Scimitars of the Ragged Dervish. I know I’m not the only one whose had a scimitar that can be hurled at the enemy and this is a nice magical version of such a weapon being a +2 keen great scimitar that can be hurled in a 50 ft. long by 5 ft wide path and cut anyone who fails a Reflex DC 15 saving throw.The second appendix covers the PrCs. It’s a nice mix and includes several different feels. Take the first one, the Iron Lord. Here we have a tyrant in the making, a warrior based PrC that uses fear and Chardun’s blessings to improve his own leadership abilities. Then we have others like the Moonlight Lord, a servant of Belsameth that gains powers fitting for a shapechanger like damage resistance that can only be overcome with silver. Unfortunatly, this fighting based PrC only had a d6 hit die.The new monsters include some templates like the Spirit-Eunuch Djinni and the Paragon Beast, as well as new creatures like the Thulkas spawned Fierien, warriors who live only to serve, created from the very sun that the titan is imprisoned in.The art is solid. The PrC section shines with Timothy’s art. His work graces most of the PrCs these days in the SL product line so if you’ve seen any products in the Player’s Guide series, that’s most likely his work. The layout is simple two column of text with the rough stonework border, similar to the cover, but in black and white. The use of a full page to separate the chapters seems unnecessary but as there is no advertising in this book, seems a fair trade off. The price, $23.99 for 144 black and white pages, is about industry average. If the product had been the 160 originally noted in the review guide, maybe more details and utility could’ve been crammed in.The book isn’t bad. It just that outside of the Zodiac planes, all of the rest of them don’t say, “Scarred Lands”, they say, “Standard D&D with some SL Trappings.” Not a good thing for something that’s supposed to incorporate the magic of the planes to them. If you’re looking for official Scarred Lands material that can be augmented through the standard books and some hard work in creating the game stats for the entities found there, Edge of Infinity is your book.</blockquote>

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