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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2011525" data-attributes="member: 18387">Review of Dweomercraft: Familiars, by Steve Creech, et al.Dark Quest Games/ENWorld Publishing     This review is of a pdf format of this book. The premise of the book is to provide ideas and mechanics for making familiars a more important aspect of any characters life. There are over a 120 pages of such material.The book has a table of contents and starts off with two stories to presumably illustrate how much richer an adventure and story can be with a fleshed out familiar. Then it leads into what races prefer which creatures as familiars and why. The reasons are sensible, such as elves like creatures of the air and gnomes like creatures that live on or in the ground. However, these preferences are not presented as steadfast rules, they are presented as more like tendencies. An Aasimar will likely have familiars that are also of good alignment and be very unlikely to have neutral or evil familiars is a summation of how these preferences are presented. This chapter goes into a lot of likely PC races, such as Hobgoblin, Medusa, and Minotaurs; to name a few.I personally do not like the manner in which this is presented, meaning they listed things as advantages and disadvantages when game wise they aren’t. They are just a why they would pick these as familiars and a why they wouldn’t. I do like that all of these things were thought of for me, which is why I get such products. I also like that the reasoning is much in line with what I personally would have done if I had taken the time to decide the why’s and what’s of familiar selection based on racial preferences.The next section is on traits. I found this personally amusing as I read through them because I was thinking of how "allergies" could be used as annoying little comic relief tools during a "tense" part of various adventures. Or how playing an obviously "deceitful" familiar while the PC is involved in sensitive diplomatic negotiations of some type could ruin their credibility. This then goes on to add to this great train of thought by throwing in a variety of allergies and even curses. All on nice tables to allow you to randomly roll such things.Chapter 2 goes into acquiring different and more powerful familiars. What I really like is that I am of the opinion that spellcasters should not have to use feats to do this. So the authors presented both the "feat path" and the "spell path" of gaining familiars that are more powerful and useful to higher level spellcasters. So now I and the "feat path"  DM’s can find this chapter of use.Another area the authors delve into is where did the familiar come from, anyway? To most this may seem to be obvious. I really like the origin of the spellcasters Avatar, where the familiar is essentially a physical manifestation of a portion of the caster’s psyche. They also cover the construct, undead, other-palanar origins as well. Plus a number of others. This section gave me a lot of ideas, which is my big requirement for buying such products as this, inspiration.Chapter 3 goes into great depth about why you should and should not summon other planar creatures, how you do it, and the benefits, risks, and drawbacks of summoning the various types of familiars discussed in this chapter. They even break it down to inner and outer planar creatures and even include tables and information about elementals, including improved versions of each.   The one thing that I know I am going to have to give serious consideration is the benefits some of these familiars granted, such as Fast Healing 2 and Fire Immunity. A number of them were essentially skill feats giving a +3 bonus to this or that skill.This chapter then goes into diseases familiars can catch, despite or because of their exotic origins, a plot device that could easily hook players into a new adventure of a very personal nature. It also discusses "quirks" that these types of familiars will have just because of them being "alien" to their masters culture.The authors also gave several examples of familiars statted out and wrote numerous "templates" to use while creating the wide variety of familiars possible.Chapter 4 goes on to cover undead familiars. Essentially the same format of Chapter 3 is used to discuss the various aspects of having an undead familiar, such as why and why not, where do you get them, what benefits do they give the PC, and so on. I must say that by this point I have become impressed with two things, the thoroughness of the variety of creatures presented and the thoroughness of the consequences, good or bad, that having these familiars cause. Chapter 5 goes on to give the same treatment to Constructs, Chapter 6 talks about flying types of familiars,Chapter 7 covers reptiles, Chapter 8 covers rodents, chapter 9 presents Vermin, Chapter 10 covers what it calls "Exceptional" familiars which are mostly just very unusual familiars such as eels, scate, penguins, and even the Tasmanian Devil.Chapter 11 covers large humanoids and using them as a Seneschal and even gives a feat for binding one to your PC. A spell caster alternative to a cohort in my opinion.Chapter 12 covers the acquiring and use of Oozes as familiars. Chapter 13 goes into equipment for familiars and their masters. Essentially, this chapter presents common sense equipment that you would want for your familiar, including magical items. Nothing that I thought of as powerful, just useful for keeping a familiar alive, much like magic items for PC’s do.Chapter 14 goes into making your familiar more powerful either through enhancements or just upgrading to a newer and more powerful one. It even gives a discussion of how and when to add levels to familiars to keep them "in line" with the power level of its master. These levels are gained by the familiar through its master donating their own xp’s. The authors give a very good discussion on the pro’s and con’s of adding character levels and why to allow only classes that make sense for a given familiar to have, as well as why you would want to. The Mage Bond PrC is also presented. I do not see many PC’s choosing this PrC because they have to give up five levels of spell casting progression to complete it. However, the benefits to the caster and their familiar are very strong. Which is probably why the authors balanced it by sacrificing so many spell casting levels. However, if a PC really loves their familiar and is a role player, they will be interested in this PrC. Plus it does greatly strengthen the caster and the familiar. So as a "team" they will still be very potent and useful to any party of adventurers and on their own.Overall opinion. I am surprisingly pleased. Very pleased. The authors seemed to me to give very serious consideration to balance issues, discussing many of them. The new spells are very sensible and not uber powerful. Even the PrC is a logical kind of class and appears to be well balanced due to the sacrificing of the five levels of casting. I also like the detail and wide variety of optional familiars given. The art is nothing exceptional, but the format, detail, and obvious thought given to all the issues are far better than I have seen in a lot of D20 books.In case any of you are like me and also own Troll Lord Games Familiar book, or are also considering it, there is very little overlap between these two books. This book is about what can a Spell Caster do to make their familiar more interesting and viable, while TLG’s book is about how can any class have a familiar or animal companion.My bottom line opinion of this product is that it is very good, a must buy if you are even moderately interested in its content. It has given me plenty of ideas and inspiration to make me eager to use the material for any player willing to give it a try. Not to mention making enemy spell casters AND their familiars a threat to be wary of. I also like how thorough the table of contents is and the fact that they have one.I enjoy it when a product surprises me with how much I like it. Kudos to the team of writers!Edited for formatting problems.</blockquote>

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