Psion
Adventurer
Experts V.3.5 is a revision of the acclaimed Experts book by Skirmisher Publishing. The book provides more extensive coverage of the expert NPC class featured in the 3.5 DMG. The credits include Michael J. Variola, Paul A. Knorr, Perry Frix, and the Skirmisher Game Development Group (whoever that is...)
A First Look
Experts V.3.5 is available in print format as a 176 page perfect-bound soft-cover book with an MSRP of $24.95.
The cover of the bok is illustrated with full color paintings by Lissanne Lake. The front cover depicts a craftsman forging a sword while a wizard, a warrior, and a big scaly lizard look on. The back cover piece depicts a woman in a gown in front of a window standing by a table with a book and a table full of reagents. Both are nice pieces.
The interior art, however, leaves something to be desired. Much of the book’s illustrations are public domain woodcuts and other public domain pictures. Many of the remaining look positively amateur and sloppy. Though I’m tired of seeing woodcuts recycled in low end books, I must say I prefer that to some of the bad cheap art pieces, and they would have been better off leaving the latter out.
The formatting of the book is adequate, including table organization and appearance and font choices. I noticed no glaring editorial gaffes.
A Deeper Look
Experts V.3.5 seems to have two major goals. The first is to add detail and ease of use to the expert NPC class. Second is to make a version of expert class playable by as a PC (much as the fighter is a PC version of a warrior.)
The “PC-ized” expert is called the specialist. The specialist, much like the expert, may choose any ten skills as class skills. As you will see in a moment, this allows the specialist to plug into the following chapters of the book that you would also use for an NPC expert.
Of course, a specialist enjoys a few benefits over the expert which the authors hope bring it in line with the PCs. The specialist enjoys 8 skill points per level, medium BAB, a slightly improved reflex and fortitude save (similar to the swashbuckler in complete warrior, the expert has save bonuses that upgrade its poor saves to medium save scale), as well as 11 bonus feats and 4 new skills over the course of 20 levels.
While these particular improvements are a good start, do they do the job of upgrading the specialist, the main contention I believe you will find that is that unless the selected skills are different than a rogue’s and those skills play an important role in the campaign, it’s still going to be a tough sell over the rogue.
The specialist, however, appears in its entirety in the introduction of the book. The bulk of the book are the 5 “metaclass” chapters, each describing a particular type of expert - craftsmen, entertainers, professionals, scholars, and tradesmen. Each of these metaclasses provides some guidance where to place the optional expert skills, and each chapter features instances of these metatypes with more specific guidance on where to put class skills. Craftsmen include the likes of armorers and sculptors, entertainers include acrobats and courtesans, and so forth.
Each metaclass has the sort of material you would see for a full blown PC class, including a paragraph each on things such as race, alignment religion, and a few sample starting packages. Each of the subtypes also has more specific background, race, religion, and alignment notes (but not a starting package.) This is an exhaustive level of detail.
The book also features 10 detailed appendices, with topics including:
You may like this book...
You may like this book if you want a more skill driven campaign and a few rules and character types to support it. It may also be to your liking if you want detailed NPC experts but would like to make them quickly. You might like this book if you like detailed guidelines for craft and profession skills and feel the core rules don’t give you enough. You also might like this book if you want a PC type that emphasizes skill use other than the rogue, but there may be better options (see below).
You might not like this book...
You might not like this book if skills are something that only rogues need to worry about in your game, you are comfortable doing NPC experts on the fly, or otherwise don’t need this level of detail in your game.
You also might not like this book if cheap art bothers you.
My Take
(This section is the application of my personal values and my desire to represent my tastes. I recognize that not everyone has the same values in gaming books, from which I derive my rating. If you disagree with my rating, I suggest you read the rest of my review and draw your own conclusions.)
I run more skill driven games that I believe most DMs do. That being the case, some of this content is very good for me. In particular, I anticipate getting a lot of use out of the new skills appendix and sample characters.
I do like the concept of a skill driven PC type for this reason. However, as alluded to above, it’s not my favorite take on this concept. The jack-of-all-trades class in the Black Company Campaign Setting by Green Ronin seems to fill the niche of the specialist better. The more frequent bonus feat and emulate feat and skill abilities help make the jack-of-all-trades applicable in adventuring situations in ways I don’t think the specialist will be. As Green Ronin’s Advanced Class Codex seems to be dead in the water, the specialist may be your best choice for such a class unless you can dig up the BCCS, unless some enterprising publisher grabs the OGC and republishes it. Lacking that, it is nice that the specialist will provide something to the wider audience that might not have access to BCCS.
Overall, I think I will get more use out of this book than Skirmisher’s Warriors, but I do feel that most of the metatype chapters had exposition that I would never use. This would make good content for a smaller, cheaper product, potentially a PDF book (alas, Skirmisher does not appear to distribute that way, at least not at the ENWorld Download Store.)
Though I do think I’ll get some use out of the book, between my preference for the BCCS JoT class, my feel that there is too much fluff in the metaclass chapter, and the lousy art, I have difficulty justifying more than a C+ for this product.
Overall Grade: C+
-Alan D. Kohler
A First Look
Experts V.3.5 is available in print format as a 176 page perfect-bound soft-cover book with an MSRP of $24.95.
The cover of the bok is illustrated with full color paintings by Lissanne Lake. The front cover depicts a craftsman forging a sword while a wizard, a warrior, and a big scaly lizard look on. The back cover piece depicts a woman in a gown in front of a window standing by a table with a book and a table full of reagents. Both are nice pieces.
The interior art, however, leaves something to be desired. Much of the book’s illustrations are public domain woodcuts and other public domain pictures. Many of the remaining look positively amateur and sloppy. Though I’m tired of seeing woodcuts recycled in low end books, I must say I prefer that to some of the bad cheap art pieces, and they would have been better off leaving the latter out.
The formatting of the book is adequate, including table organization and appearance and font choices. I noticed no glaring editorial gaffes.
A Deeper Look
Experts V.3.5 seems to have two major goals. The first is to add detail and ease of use to the expert NPC class. Second is to make a version of expert class playable by as a PC (much as the fighter is a PC version of a warrior.)
The “PC-ized” expert is called the specialist. The specialist, much like the expert, may choose any ten skills as class skills. As you will see in a moment, this allows the specialist to plug into the following chapters of the book that you would also use for an NPC expert.
Of course, a specialist enjoys a few benefits over the expert which the authors hope bring it in line with the PCs. The specialist enjoys 8 skill points per level, medium BAB, a slightly improved reflex and fortitude save (similar to the swashbuckler in complete warrior, the expert has save bonuses that upgrade its poor saves to medium save scale), as well as 11 bonus feats and 4 new skills over the course of 20 levels.
While these particular improvements are a good start, do they do the job of upgrading the specialist, the main contention I believe you will find that is that unless the selected skills are different than a rogue’s and those skills play an important role in the campaign, it’s still going to be a tough sell over the rogue.
The specialist, however, appears in its entirety in the introduction of the book. The bulk of the book are the 5 “metaclass” chapters, each describing a particular type of expert - craftsmen, entertainers, professionals, scholars, and tradesmen. Each of these metaclasses provides some guidance where to place the optional expert skills, and each chapter features instances of these metatypes with more specific guidance on where to put class skills. Craftsmen include the likes of armorers and sculptors, entertainers include acrobats and courtesans, and so forth.
Each metaclass has the sort of material you would see for a full blown PC class, including a paragraph each on things such as race, alignment religion, and a few sample starting packages. Each of the subtypes also has more specific background, race, religion, and alignment notes (but not a starting package.) This is an exhaustive level of detail.
The book also features 10 detailed appendices, with topics including:
- Prestige Classes: The guildmaster, spellcrafter, and militia leader. The guild leader may be expected, but it’s a bit unusual in that it gains spells; I’m as dubious about that as I am having spell casting assassins be the norm. The spellcrafter makes sense to me, however: it’s the occasional craftsman in a fantasy world who use spells to aid their craft.
- New Skills: This is probably the bulkiest appendix of the book. It adds a bevy of new craft, profession, and knowledge skills. It also adds a few new basic skills, read magic text (which seems redundant with spellcraft to me, which has this function) and taste and smell (which make sense, but I could probably live without.)
- New feats: A variety of new feats are offered, principally related to skills in some way. Most are well-executed.
- Sample characters: A nice selection of detailed NPCs using the rules herein.
- New magic items: A selection of magic items useful in the lives of experts.
- Guilds: A brief appendix with some guidelines on making guilds, and tables for making random guilds.
- Costs for expert services
- Expert XP awards: Because really (and I’ve said this before), the standard XP system is for adventurer types.
- Expert work areas: A few details on the working spaces of, er, experts. There is some discussion, one (gridless) map, and a few photos of miniature buildings and historical images. I thought this appendix felt a little slapdash.
- The open game license (okay, you knew that was there, I just didn’t want any silly questions about what the 10th appendix was.)
You may like this book...
You may like this book if you want a more skill driven campaign and a few rules and character types to support it. It may also be to your liking if you want detailed NPC experts but would like to make them quickly. You might like this book if you like detailed guidelines for craft and profession skills and feel the core rules don’t give you enough. You also might like this book if you want a PC type that emphasizes skill use other than the rogue, but there may be better options (see below).
You might not like this book...
You might not like this book if skills are something that only rogues need to worry about in your game, you are comfortable doing NPC experts on the fly, or otherwise don’t need this level of detail in your game.
You also might not like this book if cheap art bothers you.
My Take
(This section is the application of my personal values and my desire to represent my tastes. I recognize that not everyone has the same values in gaming books, from which I derive my rating. If you disagree with my rating, I suggest you read the rest of my review and draw your own conclusions.)
I run more skill driven games that I believe most DMs do. That being the case, some of this content is very good for me. In particular, I anticipate getting a lot of use out of the new skills appendix and sample characters.
I do like the concept of a skill driven PC type for this reason. However, as alluded to above, it’s not my favorite take on this concept. The jack-of-all-trades class in the Black Company Campaign Setting by Green Ronin seems to fill the niche of the specialist better. The more frequent bonus feat and emulate feat and skill abilities help make the jack-of-all-trades applicable in adventuring situations in ways I don’t think the specialist will be. As Green Ronin’s Advanced Class Codex seems to be dead in the water, the specialist may be your best choice for such a class unless you can dig up the BCCS, unless some enterprising publisher grabs the OGC and republishes it. Lacking that, it is nice that the specialist will provide something to the wider audience that might not have access to BCCS.
Overall, I think I will get more use out of this book than Skirmisher’s Warriors, but I do feel that most of the metatype chapters had exposition that I would never use. This would make good content for a smaller, cheaper product, potentially a PDF book (alas, Skirmisher does not appear to distribute that way, at least not at the ENWorld Download Store.)
Though I do think I’ll get some use out of the book, between my preference for the BCCS JoT class, my feel that there is too much fluff in the metaclass chapter, and the lousy art, I have difficulty justifying more than a C+ for this product.
Overall Grade: C+
-Alan D. Kohler
