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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 2011173" data-attributes="member: 2209">Egyptian Gods is the third in the three part Lore of the Gods series of PDF sourcebooks by Bastion Press providing 3.0 d20 translations of real world ancient mythologies. It provides mechanical material for both players and DMs. Players have a slew of gods with defined domains, a mechanical worshipper benefit, new domains, spells, and prestige classes. DMs have full stat blocks for divine avatars, new artifacts, and Egyptian themed monsters. While real legends of the gods are used as references, the mechanical material is designed to fit into a d20 D&D world instead of exactly mimicking the mythology.The gods are presented with divine listings, avatar stat blocks, and a few paragraphs of description and history. Almost every god includes both a nature and a funerary/afterlife aspect of their divine portfolio as well as animal headed depictions. Most major gods are presented, with only Ptah and Maat being conspicuously absent. Even the moon god Khonshu known from the old Marvel comic series Moon Knight makes an appearance. The most developed back-story of the gods in the book is the Osiris-Set-Isis-Horus story arc of murder, vengeance, and resurrection. Set is interesting because he is not only presented as a nemesis deity, but also as a non-evil patron of desert peoples. The book does not present an Egyptian mythology or complete cosmology, but makes references to them in describing the individual gods.The divine listings include alignment, allies, favored animals, classes, and weapons and a minor benefit for favored classes. These worshipper benefits range from a +1 bonus to an ability score to bonuses on certain skill or attack rolls. This is unbalancing and class and worship forcing as the benefits only accrue to worshippers who are also in the favored classes, but this is generally a modest power and can work fine for campaigns where DMs want divine favor to make a character slightly better than the norm.  The avatar concept posits that gods can project thought images of themselves to interact with the mortal world. These projected avatars take the form of 20th level characters with maximum hit points, all 18 starting abilities, lots of magic items, including weapons beyond the mortal +10 limit, and a unique artifact. They are also immune to drains, mind-affecting abilities, poisons, and a few other attack forms. In addition they automatically know every spell on their spell lists. Despite these hefty abilities they are still rated as CR 20 just as any normal 20th level character would be. The authors point out that the given forms and class choices of the gods are but one example of the forms the avatars can make. Interestingly some of the avatars are not presented as human, but as elven, dwarven, or even lizardfolk in the case of Sobek the crocodile god. Being d20 the stat blocks for high level characters are quite long even though they skip the divine immunities spelled out in the introduction.The only art in the book appears in the deity section. Following in the footsteps of Norse Gods, the second book in the series, the art consists of photoshop altered photographs of models. For Egyptian Gods this mostly consists of lightly clad deities including a topless Bast, with many displaying pasted on animal heads. The feel for the art seems in sync with the pantheon's genre, unlike the less than Viking specimens seen in Norse Gods. It is too bad the art does not cover every deity or any of the monsters presented later in the book. The lack of art in the monster section is particularly odd as some were taken directly from Bastion's fully illustrated Minions books.After the god listings 12 new domains are presented, some being carry overs from the prior Lore of the Gods books. Unfortunately this leads to some mismatch in domains to gods. For example, the underworld domain that worked for Hades or Hel in the Greek and Norse pantheons respectively provides a list of evil spells designed to smite good characters seems out of place for Osiris the good god of the underworld. Similarly the weather domain provides a number of cold based spells that are out of place being offered by an Egyptian god. Each domain states which god offers the domain which is a nice reference point for a d20 pantheon book.The spell lists for the new spells are a much needed addition to the series as they were noticeably absent from the other two books. 43 spells are presented as general knowledge with many carried over from the prior two books as well as two from Bation's Spells and Magic. New ones of note include silverkiss, a 1st level spell that temporarily infuses weapons with a coating of silver, and a number of time related spells. The second level temporal bolts launches up to five orbs of accelerated time that cause damage through causing time stress on the body, a neat concept, but the uncapped 2d4 +1/level damage per bolt is too much for a second level spell. The sixth level version also affects spell durations, and there are even time travel spells with an appropriately harsh xp requirement.Eleven Egyptian themed monsters present big and small terrors, including four from the Minions books. There are two unique mythological creatures, the Sphinx of Giza and Sekhmet and a number of undead, a funerary guardian construct, a nasty vermin, a sand elemental, and even a scorpion centauroid race. Sekhmet has a really cool creation story of Ra being angry at the babbling noise of mortals plucked out his eye and hurled it at the world as a burning fireball that turned into the flying lion Sekhmet who would have killed all of humanity unless Ra had relented. Also the 1 hit point fleshbane beetles are a nod to the movie The Mummy as they burrow into a victim's heart one round after successfully biting. Unfortunately monster power mechanics are not always clear and some of the stat blocks (such as Sekhmet’s attacks) seem a little off.There are Eqyptian artifacts and new magic items as well, such as hand phylacteries that work like wands but cost 1.5 times as much and keep the hands free for holding spell components or other items.Finally, there are five prestige classes:    Medjay five-level desert mercenaries with terrain abilities and bonus feats    Moon Knight ten-level vigilantes with bonus feats and darkness powers    Setite Keepers of Lore five-level desert loremasters with 2/5 spell casting    Sisters of Selket five-level female devotees of the scorpion goddess    Tombmason ten-level architects and tomb raiders, better than an expert but not as good as a rogue.The sisters class is missing the progression chart and a full entry on the goddess, both would be useful in using the class. The tombmasons would make a neat NPC, perhaps a rival to a party rogue, or perhaps a good class to use in a low power hero setting such as a pulp genre or the horror of Call of Cthulhu d20.Overall, Eqyptian Gods presents a useable version of d20 god interactions with avatars and divine benefits as well as providing standard player goodies such as new domains and spells and DM material including new Eqyptian themed items, monsters and some tastes of the Egyptian mythology.</blockquote>

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