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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 2011508" data-attributes="member: 10913">Faiths and Pantheons is a 3E book aiming to be a definitive source on deities and their followers in the Forgotten Realms. It is 223 pages long, and includes information on all the gods of the forgotten realms, many prestige classes, and a few other goodies. This expands on the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting  (FRCS), and I assume the reader is familiar with it. Although a 3E product, virtually everything is 3.5E compliant and I will ignore the conversion issues in this review.    FaP opens with an 8 page introduction that skims over the theology of Toril to dive into a brisk description of the divine rank mechanics (from deities and demigods, now available through the RSRD). I found the short discussion on Ao’s omnipotence, immigrant deities, and merging pantheons unsatisfying, and the decision to include full divine stats on the gods unnecessary. As a gaming aid, I doubt I will need a god’s statistics, but at least this book (unlike deities and demigods) uses the Epic Level Handbook rules to create reasonable foes for epic characters. I think a more through discussion of theology would have been more useful (for example, just the sidebar on demon-worshipping gave me some ideas).    Chapter two describes in detail the 30 major deities of Faerun over 78 pages. Each deity receives about 1.5 pages of background material, including the dogma and cleric-relevant-statistics (domains, alignment, weapon, etc.) found in the FRCS, but also general information about the deity, it’s history and relations, and its church/faith, including sects, common attire, allies and enemies, common endeavors, and so on. If found it very useful. Oh, each deity also gets a character write-up (taking another 1 to 2 pages) – which I found not in the least useful. Those in need of such mechanics, however, will be delighted to see the Epic Level rules implemented. The deities lack CR, but range in power considerably (examples include Tyr at Paladin 20/Cleric 20/Divine Rank 18 and Uthgar at Barbarian 20/Ranger 20/Divine Rank 6).     Chapter three describes 89 other deities over 62 pages – that’s an average of 0.69 pages/deity. Obviously, there is less here but by eliminating the (useless, for me) character write ups the book still manages to provide good, useful, information that adds much more to the deity then the one line they get in the FRCS. I should note that some of the art is abysmal (the drow pantheon in particular I found appalling).     The next chapter has 30 pages, and describes three places of worship – one of Malar, one of Shar, and one of Tempus. Each has some excellent description of the local ceremonies and goings-on, a map and detailed description, NPCs (often with added little crunch bits), and advice on fitting the site into your campaign. I find this to be an excellent way to present these places, and the locales themselves are reasonable (though not amazing).    Then comes the fifth chapter with 96 pages dedicated to 20 prestige classes. These are all cleric-oriented (though a few players of other classes may find some appealing). Generally I think they are useful and fitting. I particularly liked the elemental archon (a path to elemental transcendence), heartwarder (a cha-boosted sorceress of Sune is very… appealing), and the stormlord (casually walking through a severe storm has its charm). The chapter also includes a Chosen of Bane template, which I found disappointing. Nothing against the template per-se, but I just think a better elucidation of what a Chosen is and general guidelines to help DMs design chosen for all deities would have been much more useful, and are sorely missing.    The book closes with the appendix, using the last 10 pages. It includes a few feats (largely included in the Complete series), an extensive listing of salient divine abilities, a new domain (repose, including two new spells), a list of monster deities (26 of them), and a table summarizing the Faerunian pantheon.Most of this material is, by its nature, tied down to the FR setting. With just a little work, however, it is very applicable to any generic setting and is very likely to fit into your campaign. Want an idea for a architecture or dressing style for your sun-god worshippers? Flip over to Lathander’s entry. Want a strom-god cleric? Take a look at the stormlord prestige class. For an FR-specific book, I think it is fairly salvagable for another campaign.    In between the NPCs and deities, the book also includes a few new magic items, weapon/armor special abiltiies, detailed mounts, and other goodies. That's a good thing, helping to make the individuals, well, individuals, and adding flavour and cruch to the work. Good show.FaP has good content, providing useful information on both the gods and their mortal followers that can enrich any FR campaign, and a host of prestige classes that would make good PCs or NPCs. The information on the three places of worship is also excellent, the authors have truly tried to make the places useful for the DM and it shows, and the new magic items can be useful.    Unfortunately, it also spends a lot of space detailing the gods themselves which I found added very little to the useful content of the work, while at the same time failing to accommodate epic gaming with a basic things such as CR. It also leaves unanswered many questions about the divine and its relation to Toril, such as the nature of Chosen, myths, divine essence, divine intervention, and so on. It is not at all clear to me why I need to go to Magic of Faerun to learn Toril’s creation myth, or why there is no serious religious faith given, even as an example, instead of shallow beliefs and practices.     In conclusion, while the book does provide good material for gaming, I found it rather shallow and mechanistic. It is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it is just not very impressive. It presents serviceable ideas on the faiths, serviceable locales, and serviceable prestige classes – but nothing that truly impressed me. And I found its approach too mechanical at times (such as giving full write-ups on the deities, or writing a Chosen template instead of general guidelines). If I could, I would give it a 3.5 rating. As it stands, I give it a score of 3 – it has some good quality material, but nothing too spectacular and not without flaws or omissions.</blockquote>

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