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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010329" data-attributes="member: 172">FaeriesFaeries is one of Bastion Press' general rules expansions for d20 system fantasy campaigns. Faeries provides rules and background material to add the fey races and their otherworldly realms to your campaign.A First LookFaeries is a 128-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $27.95. There are few d20 publishers that use a full color softcover format, so there is little point of comparison. As might be expected, the book is thinner than a black-and-white supplement of the same price, but the price/page ratio is better than the 96-page Bastion books.The cover is color, with a purple backdrop. The front cover picture is by Doug Kovacs and depicts a winged male faerie with a staff in his hand.The interior is also color. Contributing artists include Anthony Francisco, Ben Eargle, Ginger Kubic, Michael Orwick, and Todd Morasch. The interior art quality varies from acceptable to very good; there are Bastion products with both better and worse on this score. It's a shame that Bastion could or did not tap Stephanie Law for this book (who worked on some past Bastion book), as she is, in my opinion, the queen of the faerie look.One unfortunate point about the art: it seems to be used more decoratively than illustratively. There are many instances in the book where the subject matter could use a direct artistic representation to show certain elements (especially races), and there is none.The interior text is conservatively sizes and the lines and paragraphs are single spaced, giving the book a good overall text density. The book uses a calligraphic font for headers, but it is not too difficult to read. I did notice at multiple instances of a table cell overlapping and obscuring text.A Deeper LookFaeries is divided into a mere four chapters, covering fey characters, lore, lands, and magic respectively. There is also an appendix with fey creatures and templates.The characters chapter has the usual miscellany of character creation options: new races, prestige classes, feats, and skills.There are seven fey races provided in PHB format. An interesting aspect of some of these races is that there is a list of "fey racial traits" that some races use. Basically, the racial trait list provides a number of features and abilities that the player can add to the fey creature to represent variations in the characteristics of the fey character. These racial traits all have an ECL cost attached (some of them expressed in partial points); by accepting the ECL modifier, the character gains some unusual abilities. This system is a little fast-and-loose, and with any such "point-buy" sort of system, it may take a little GM monitoring to prevent abuse.A bit more troubling/confusing is that some of the listed races get additional abilities from this list gratis as they advance; presumably your ECL is not supposed to increase as you go up levels. This is a bit troublesome as races that have abilities that change as they advance (like some templates) are problematic to balance.Another problem with many of the races is they use odd racial modifiers. This breaks with the conventions of even modifiers only set forth in the core rules and creates a greater tendency to min/max character ability scores.The seven basic races included here are: -Bogie: Bogies are troublesome, mischevious faeries serving the unseelie court. They are small and have spell like abilities and free racial trait selections as they advance. -Deep Fey: The deep fey are a race of fey that dwell in the "underdark", adapted from the bastion monster book Minions. The deep fey is less potent than the Minions version, with less hd, low ability scores, and spell resistance, which probably makes it more playable at lower levels. The have light sensitivity, can create darkness, and have other spell like abilities. -Faeries: These are the "common fey". They have only basic fey characteristics and some extra proficiencies in addition to any special characteristics they purchase and gain through levels. -Freeorin: Freeorin are "noble" or "pureblooded" fey. They are basically similar to the faeries, with the addition of a few spell like abilities and other minor changes. -Half-fey: Half-fey are the offspring of a mortal and a fey creature. They have many fey characteristics (like resistance to charm and illusion magic and spell like abilities), but no access to special racial traits. There is a minor problem in that there is a template later in this book with an identical name but which pans out differently. -Scath: Much as the half-fey are unions of fey and mortal, scath are the result of unions between deep fey and mortals, and have some of that races characteristics (darkness related spell-like abilities and spell resistance.) -Sprite: Sprite are very much like pixies – small fey creatures with insect-like wings. The naming is unfortunate, for "sprite" is a category of fey creatures under the core rules.In addition to these races, the book outlines a "racial class" progression for a nymph, done in a very similar style to those in the Savage Species book, with some levels that only give special abilities instead of hit dice, with the exception that the class is actually extends beyond the abilities of the base nymph in the core rules.Unfortunately, the execution of this nymph class is flawed. It states that the nymph only has an attack modifier stemming from its strength bonus. However, it has no strength bonus, and the formulae for the advancement of all creatures is explicit and published, so the author should know exactly what BAB the nymph has. In the follow on progression with increased HD, the author fails to follow the BAB formula there, too. This reflects a weak understanding of the d20 system and led me to look at other items in the book with a very cautious eye.The book reprints (and identifies the source of) ECLs from Dragon #293. This took me aback a little. First off, those number were playtest numbers, and many of them are quite off; indeed, many of the numbers are changed in savage species. Second, this violated the terms of the OGL by reprinting closed content material and indicating compatibility with it. Most of the feats are exclusive to those with fey blood. A few examples include: -Blood of the Fey: This feat is actually for a non-fey and mimics some of the fey racial abilities. It grants +3 on saves vs. enchantment spells, as well as +2 to the DC of such spells cast by the characters. This seems a bit like a straight improvement over the spell focus feat. -Fey Spell Mastery andFey Magic: These feats allow fey creatures to ignore spel components. The former allows the fey to ignore a cheap (<5 gp) spell component by virtue of their connection to the faerie world. The latter allows the fey to use magic sand from the faerie realm in place of any material component. -Improved familiar: This feat gives the character's familiar the fey-born feat. Again, I feel this is a case of unfortunate naming; something like feyborn familiar would have been more precise and not have tripped over other similar-names feats out there.There are a total of ten fey related prestige classes: faemancer, faerie hunter, faerier (adapted from Spells & Magic), fae-walker, fey guardian, fey prankster, fey-touched, knight of the fey, mage of the circles, and mortal slayer. These classes have an emphasis for or against fey. Many of them overlap a little and are similar in concept. Some of the classes (such as faemancer, faerie hunter, and mortal slayer) receive good attack bonus progression in addition to good abilities and their own spell advancement table, which may make them a little strong.Faeries also uses the concept of prestige races, first introduced in Bastion's Oathbound setting. A prestige race is that each is a set of associated abilities, or "enchantments of the flesh". To take any of them, a character must have the evolve feat. Once the character has this feat, she may begin taking prestige race abilities at the cost of experience points.Each prestige race listed here has four abilities included in it. Each particular prestige race or set of abilities is called a focus, and each ability must typically be taken in sequence. Each ability costs a large number of XP and the earlier abilities in a sequence are more expensive than the later ones.An example focus is the focus of the beast. The four enchantments of the flesh are feral creature, wild creature, snouted creature, and tailed creature. A character's race colloquially becomes the adjective of the enchantment, so a dwarf with the feral creature enchantment is a "feral dwarf". A character who takes the feral creature enchantment gains a +2 natural armor bonus and cold resistance 5, at the cost of 3500 xp. The character could then take the wild creature enchantment, gaining claw attacks at the cost of 4500 xp.The cost of these enchantment more than pays for the associated abilities, and they somewhat resemble "permanent magic items." However, the drawback of mechanics of this nature that bypass the level mechanic is that it invalidates the level mechanic as a measure of PC power.A new mechanic introduced in this book the aspect of nature mechanic. A character must take the feat nature's aspect. A character can shift between aspects, and each aspect has a number of different "focuses." A character can only have one aspect at a time, but may have more than one focus in the aspect. Adopting an aspect costs 500 xp, as does adopting each focus. Each focus provides both a penalty and a drawback. For example, the radiant focus of the aspect of the lights provides a bonus to will save and a penalty to fortitude saves.There are a few problems with the aspect system. First, the system just does not seem like it will be attractive to players to me. Players are not likely to pay precious xp for abilities that come linked to penalities. Second, when it discusses changing aspects, it refers to a diagram the defines how progression from one aspect to the other, but the diagram is missing. Finally, the term "focus" is also used in the prestige race mechanic, and repeating its use here creates the real possibility of confusion.The second chapter is entitled Lore of the Faerie and lays out some basic facts about faeries and how they differ from other races. The chapter is short, and in essence discusses myths about faeries compiled from various cultures, and each has a game interpretation if that myth is taken to be true. For example, as an example, if you wish to draw a fey to you, if you use one of several listed lure, there is a 5% cumulative chance per day of drawing a fey to the location.The third chapter is entitled World of Faerie, and defines the qualities and contents of what the book calls FaerieLand. The book uses Manual of the Planes terms for basic qualities of the plane. This is a bit surprising, as the plane format material is not open content at the time of this writing.Details of the chapter include the physical characteristics of FaerieLand and their d20 System rules effects, and means of getting to and from the mortal worlds and FaerieLand. There are a variety of paths through and between mortal and fey worlds; entries to these magical roads are called doorways. Doorways are found in esoteric locations like stone rings, and can only be opened by specific methods. Doorways may also have faerie guardians.A full color map of the FaerieLand occupies a two-page spread in the book, showing many regions of this strange land. Each region has a breif description including distances to neighboring regions (in terms of DCs; FaerieLand requires wisdom checks to use), the regional seat and regent, prominent features, seasons, and legends and lore. One interesting and useful aspect about the legends & lore is that DCs are defined allowing characters with knowledge of fey or folklore to know certain aspects. Fey regions may have specific sites within them.The chapter includes a number of pre-defined and statted characters unique to specific regions or that wander between regions. This includes characters derived from myth and folklore such as the so-called "green man" or "erlking", father time, Rumplestiltskin, the Queen of Air and Darkness, Baba Yaga, and others. Most of these characters use the core rules and rules in this book to construct them vice relying on ad hoc implementations.Chapter 4 is entitled the Magic of Faerie and covers new spells, magic items, and other special rules related to faerie land.The new rules discuss a few sources of power derives from faerie legends: breath of life, true names, and magic sand.Breath of life is harvested from living creatures and causes constitution damage. Breath of life may be later used to enhance spells.True names can be used to make a target more vulnerable to spells cast using the truename. However, this section discusses how to find your own true name, but provides no good use for knowing your own true name.Magic sand, discussed briefly earlier, has many potential uses. Fey characters with the appropriate feat may use it as a universal spell component, and they can be used to enhance spells in various ways.There are a number of new spells, including new clerical domains. There are three new clerical domains in this chapter (dream, fey, and fey roads). However, there were two other clerical domains introduced earlier in the book (illusion and enchantment), and there is no good reason that all clerical domains could not have been included in this chapter.The spells themselves deal with fey or features of fey landscapes, or are of particular interest to fey. For instance, there are spells for summoning, dismissing, and detecting fey creatures as well as spells dealing with fey roadways such as detect doorway.Similarly, there are a number of fey items that are of special usefulness by or against fey. One thing of interest stuck out here: a resizing quality. This quality seems to ignore the fact that all items have such a quality under the core rules. However, if you don't like that convention, this system makes a nice alternate.Two new types of magic items are introduced in this chapter: dusts and charms. Charms are small pieces of jewelry and are hung from charm bracelets. Charm bracelets are magic items in their own right and can have a given number of charms (dependin on the power of the bracelet.) The charms themselves each add to one ability score or one type of roll.Dusts are actually not unlike wands. When created, there are fifty pinches of dust, and a dust may store a spell up to 5th level. They are not, however, spell trigger items, so in fact seem a bit more powerful than wands.Finally is the creature appendix, which contains a variety of fey creatures, such as the incorporeal doorway guardian. The classic faerie dragon (or a pretty close facsimile to it) appears here, though it is a fey not a dragon, which struck me as a little odd. Other creatures include the fey steed, jabberwock, and new "subtypes" of satyr (faun and korred). As mentioned earlier, after seeing the breakout of the nymph class, I was worried that creatures would suffer some consistency problems. Indeed, I did catch a few. The biggest offender seems to be hp. The jaberwock, for example, seems to have its hp calculated as if its constitution were lower, and the psuedo-dragon's hp seems totally arbitrary.Finally, the appendix includes three templates for making residents of faerie-land: half-fey, fey-born, and shadow-born. As mentioned earlier, the half-fey template here appears totally unrelated to the half-fey race earlier.ConclusionIf you are interested in integrating some classic faerie legends or forays into a faerie realm into your game, this book is a good start. The third chapter is nicely detailed, and has some interesting and usable interpretations of many myths.Most of the rules material is usable, but much of it is questionable. Many of the fey races seemed redundant. The customization of fey races is interesting and appropriate, but the way that new abilities are handed out to fey creatures seems like it might be a bit of a problem. Some rules like the fey aspects seem to be missing material before it can be used, and I did not find especially compelling.Overall Grade: C+-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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