JoeGKushner
Adventurer
The Encylopedia of Prestige Classes brings over fifty PrCs to the table. The real question is, can you trust Fast Forward?
The answer is maybe.
The book is broken up into three sections, skills, feats and prestige classes. The skills are a mix of those that might have use in a campaign and those that could probably be folded into other skills. For example, City Lore looks to be a mix between shadowing someone and moving silently with gather information thrown in. Other skills like Handle Large Animal or Handle Large Avian, I'd probably just fold into Animal Handling. It's good that they're there for people with very specific campaigns or those who have specific needs thought.
The feats are a mixed bunch in terms of power level. Unlike some, I really hate grading game mechanics on the feat level because what I think is underpowered may be vastly overpowered in someone else's campaign. The easiest way to tell how powerful something is can be by comparison. In that case, there are several feats that follow the standard progression. Take for example Battle-Hardened, a feat that provides that character a +2 hit point bonus and a +1 to all Fortitude saves. That seems reasonable. How about Close to Nature, Grim Demeanor or Nose for Trouble? These are the standard +2 bonus to two skills.
Some of the other feats might be a little too powerful depending on the campaign though. Take Killer Instinct. This provides the user with a +3 competence bonus to his first attack and that bonus counts towards the critical range of the weapon too. Now that may seem a little powerful, but when compared with some of the feats from Swashbuckling Adventurers, is it? No. It depends on the mood and feel of the game that the GM is looking for.
The types of feats I don't like are those that change the character base. Take Battle Blessed. While it's not overpowered, it does change the character as he now has a Damage Resistance of 1 and a +1 bonus to all reflex saves.
The meat of the book though isn't in the skills or feats but in the prestige classes. The PrCs are organized alphabetically which probably isn't the best way to go about it in a book devoted to them. The Mongoose Ultimate Prestige Class book for example, organized them by themes. Here, no matter what the character concept, it's alphabetized all the way.
One of the problems that strikes me with just about 99% of all PrCs in any book are the names. It's like someone said, “We can make this really cool concept it we just add a color of menacing noun. Instead of the Fighter, we'll get the Blood Fighter or the Dark Rogue.” I'd much rather see some inventive names with a generic name afterwards so that if for some reason I didn't like the unique name, I could use the more general one. Not a fault of Fast Forward but a trend that all PrCs have.
Some of the PrCs had a nice feel to them as they weren't done to death like the aerialist, a master of the air. These individuals use devices to fly through the air. I thought this would be perfect to combine with the aerial based site in Sacred Grounds from Atlas. Another off the cuff one, the Engineer, suffers in that some of the creations it makes have no stats listed in this book, but the user is instead referred to Dungeon World Catacombs.
Some of the classes may look initially like something familiar but are actually a different take on the subject. For example, when I saw the Escort, I thought, “Oh, another variant of the Courtesan.” However, it's a class that works to make the person they're with look good, almost like a professional escort service. A clever play on the expectation but one whose main purpose is still the gathering of information.
Because there are over fifty PrCs, some of them seem to have some overlap. For example, the “Shadow Knight is a cleric warrior... sworn themselves to the service of a vile and evil demon lord” and the Star Knight is “Masters of the mortal legions of evil demon lords”. Sure, there are some differences in the actual class, but at that point you're starting to cut hairs.
One of the things that surprised me was the amount of background detail for many of the PrCs, especially those of the Green Races. This makes almost all of the backgrounds for the demi-humans and humanoids much richer as opposed to the more general, all purpose classes like the Shadow Knight or the Time Touched.
One thing I'd like to done is the elimination of the cover replicated in black and white on the first page. This isn't some fancy painting or illustration, it a computer generated image that looks terrible when put into grayscale. The four pages of advertising was also a little bit of a shocker. For a second I thought that I'd picked up a White Wolf product. The lack of internal cover use isn't a major concern but it would've added a few more pages or could've been used for the ads. Remember the Engineer with the reference to Catacombs? That could've been taken care of with those four pages.
The art surprised me. I was prepared to wade through page after page of clip art. That's not the case for most of the book. The art chores are handled by Jim Holloway and Tony Parker and they do a good job for the most part. There are a few pieces I recognize from other works but it only annoys deeply like the one on page 10 that doesn't look like it has anything to do with anything. Even when there is clip art used, most of it is appropriate to the text surrounding it. The one time this fails to happen has to be the freaking bat on page 6 that's been in at least three other Fast Forward books. I'd really like to know why that particular image is reused so often as it has nothing to do with anything. Is it the mascot or something?
To get a four star rating, the book would either have to purge the clip art or use it all the time in the correct place. For example, no bats in the corner just because the space needed to be taken up. In addition, the price on this book is a little higher than on previous books in the series because it's softcover. The declaration of OGC seems off too. The book states that “All material other than game material already considered Open Gaming Content is considered Product Identity” and then states “With the exception of Product Identity, the text of all Classes, Skills, Feats...are Open Gaming Content.” What exactly does that mean? They need to start using brackets or italics or some other means of declaring the OGC.
The Encyclopedia of Prestige Classes brings a lot of options to the game table and like the book itself acknowledges, shouldn't be used all at once. GMs and players should carefully playtest it to insure that issues that crop up are minimized. The fresh use of art and the high level of background detail here put this product a step above other Fast forward products.
The answer is maybe.
The book is broken up into three sections, skills, feats and prestige classes. The skills are a mix of those that might have use in a campaign and those that could probably be folded into other skills. For example, City Lore looks to be a mix between shadowing someone and moving silently with gather information thrown in. Other skills like Handle Large Animal or Handle Large Avian, I'd probably just fold into Animal Handling. It's good that they're there for people with very specific campaigns or those who have specific needs thought.
The feats are a mixed bunch in terms of power level. Unlike some, I really hate grading game mechanics on the feat level because what I think is underpowered may be vastly overpowered in someone else's campaign. The easiest way to tell how powerful something is can be by comparison. In that case, there are several feats that follow the standard progression. Take for example Battle-Hardened, a feat that provides that character a +2 hit point bonus and a +1 to all Fortitude saves. That seems reasonable. How about Close to Nature, Grim Demeanor or Nose for Trouble? These are the standard +2 bonus to two skills.
Some of the other feats might be a little too powerful depending on the campaign though. Take Killer Instinct. This provides the user with a +3 competence bonus to his first attack and that bonus counts towards the critical range of the weapon too. Now that may seem a little powerful, but when compared with some of the feats from Swashbuckling Adventurers, is it? No. It depends on the mood and feel of the game that the GM is looking for.
The types of feats I don't like are those that change the character base. Take Battle Blessed. While it's not overpowered, it does change the character as he now has a Damage Resistance of 1 and a +1 bonus to all reflex saves.
The meat of the book though isn't in the skills or feats but in the prestige classes. The PrCs are organized alphabetically which probably isn't the best way to go about it in a book devoted to them. The Mongoose Ultimate Prestige Class book for example, organized them by themes. Here, no matter what the character concept, it's alphabetized all the way.
One of the problems that strikes me with just about 99% of all PrCs in any book are the names. It's like someone said, “We can make this really cool concept it we just add a color of menacing noun. Instead of the Fighter, we'll get the Blood Fighter or the Dark Rogue.” I'd much rather see some inventive names with a generic name afterwards so that if for some reason I didn't like the unique name, I could use the more general one. Not a fault of Fast Forward but a trend that all PrCs have.
Some of the PrCs had a nice feel to them as they weren't done to death like the aerialist, a master of the air. These individuals use devices to fly through the air. I thought this would be perfect to combine with the aerial based site in Sacred Grounds from Atlas. Another off the cuff one, the Engineer, suffers in that some of the creations it makes have no stats listed in this book, but the user is instead referred to Dungeon World Catacombs.
Some of the classes may look initially like something familiar but are actually a different take on the subject. For example, when I saw the Escort, I thought, “Oh, another variant of the Courtesan.” However, it's a class that works to make the person they're with look good, almost like a professional escort service. A clever play on the expectation but one whose main purpose is still the gathering of information.
Because there are over fifty PrCs, some of them seem to have some overlap. For example, the “Shadow Knight is a cleric warrior... sworn themselves to the service of a vile and evil demon lord” and the Star Knight is “Masters of the mortal legions of evil demon lords”. Sure, there are some differences in the actual class, but at that point you're starting to cut hairs.
One of the things that surprised me was the amount of background detail for many of the PrCs, especially those of the Green Races. This makes almost all of the backgrounds for the demi-humans and humanoids much richer as opposed to the more general, all purpose classes like the Shadow Knight or the Time Touched.
One thing I'd like to done is the elimination of the cover replicated in black and white on the first page. This isn't some fancy painting or illustration, it a computer generated image that looks terrible when put into grayscale. The four pages of advertising was also a little bit of a shocker. For a second I thought that I'd picked up a White Wolf product. The lack of internal cover use isn't a major concern but it would've added a few more pages or could've been used for the ads. Remember the Engineer with the reference to Catacombs? That could've been taken care of with those four pages.
The art surprised me. I was prepared to wade through page after page of clip art. That's not the case for most of the book. The art chores are handled by Jim Holloway and Tony Parker and they do a good job for the most part. There are a few pieces I recognize from other works but it only annoys deeply like the one on page 10 that doesn't look like it has anything to do with anything. Even when there is clip art used, most of it is appropriate to the text surrounding it. The one time this fails to happen has to be the freaking bat on page 6 that's been in at least three other Fast Forward books. I'd really like to know why that particular image is reused so often as it has nothing to do with anything. Is it the mascot or something?
To get a four star rating, the book would either have to purge the clip art or use it all the time in the correct place. For example, no bats in the corner just because the space needed to be taken up. In addition, the price on this book is a little higher than on previous books in the series because it's softcover. The declaration of OGC seems off too. The book states that “All material other than game material already considered Open Gaming Content is considered Product Identity” and then states “With the exception of Product Identity, the text of all Classes, Skills, Feats...are Open Gaming Content.” What exactly does that mean? They need to start using brackets or italics or some other means of declaring the OGC.
The Encyclopedia of Prestige Classes brings a lot of options to the game table and like the book itself acknowledges, shouldn't be used all at once. GMs and players should carefully playtest it to insure that issues that crop up are minimized. The fresh use of art and the high level of background detail here put this product a step above other Fast forward products.
