Five Free Races
By Ian Johnston
Silverthorne Games free download
5 PDF files, 21 pages of information (plus 5 pages of Licenses), FREE!
Five Free Races is actually five separate PDFs, each with its own page of OGC License info as the final page. Each race has information covering 4 or 5 pages, for a total of 21 pages of useful game information. And best of all, it's absolutely free! (Gosh, I sound like a commercial, don't I?)
For those of you unfamiliar with Silverthorne Games' Races of Evernor series of PDFs, each contains 12 different fantasy races suitable for use in just about any D&D (or other fantasy) game world. Five Free Races is more of the same, detailing five different fantasy races that you could plop into your campaign world. Since it's free, it's definitely worth checking out; you can view it as a preview of the type of stuff you'll find in the rest of the series.
Actually, I kind of did the Races of Evernor Series backwards, having read through (and reviewed) the first three PDFs (the ones you have to purchase, although mine were sent to me free as review copies), and then only later checked out the free stuff out of curiosity and a desire to "complete the series."
So, how does it stack up, you ask? Remarkably well. This only makes sense; while I could see cutting away the "lesser" entries and giving them away free (which would mean that the races in the PDFs you'd buy would all be of higher quality), or saving some of the really "good stuff" for the freebies to entice people to want to go out and buy the rest of the series, what we have here are entries of about the same quality as the races in Races of Evernor I, II, and III. That is to say, some really good, and some pretty much average.
Fortunately, the layout of each race is the same (best to stick to a familiar format, plus the format they came up with is a great one). With each race, we get details about their background, frequency, personality, physical description, diet, relations with other races, alignment, lands, religion, language, names (with numerous sample names), why they might become adventurers, where they fit in the Evernor campaign world (easily ignorable if you want to use them elsewhere), roleplaying tips, adventure seeds, racial traits, and a sample NPC of the race's favored class (if any). Plus, there's a "Frilf's Notes" section written as from the journals of Frilf the gnome explorer, giving his feelings on the race in question, and details on the race name's proper pronunciation and singular, plural, and adjectival forms. Each race also includes a black-and-white illustration of a typical member.
Race #1 - MALLEAN
The malleans have one main striking feature: their skeletal systems are all made of cartilage rather than bone. I found this to be most intriguing, as author Ian Johnston takes the simple concept and runs with it, coming up with quite a few logical consequences of such a physical abnormality: malleans take less damage from falling and from bludgeoning damage, they have a natural armor bonus to AC, and gain the Toughness feat for free. (I'm sure their "malleable" nature also had something to do with their racial name.) Ian also comes up with 3 different feats, all playing off of the mallean's cartilage skeleton - very nicely done. The illustration was nicely done, too.
Race #2 - ZWEIBOLD
I think the zweibolds were my least favorite of the five free races, since really, they're just two-headed kobolds of Medium size - nothing too imaginative, in my mind. Still, I have to hand it to Ian for coming up with some things that made the zweibolds more interesting; specifically, he added sexual dimorphism to the race: the males and females have different racial traits! I thought that was a clever touch. (There are also two sample NPCs, one male and one female.) Still, I found some problems with the racial metamagic feat, "simultaneous casting," which allows a two-headed creature to cast two spells in the same round. I'm not quite sure why "Alignment: Any evil" is listed as a prerequisite - surely a good two-headed spellcaster should be allowed to cast two spells per round with this feat as easily as an evil, two-headed creature can, wouldn't you think? Also, I have a bit of an issue with the whole concept of the feat, as a two-headed spellcaster still only has two hands; assuming those spells he's casting each have their own material and/or somatic components, how does being able to say the different verbal components to two spells help you out all that much? And yet, if you restrict the feat to spells with only verbal components you're really making it pretty useless, as there aren't a whole lot of those spells around. In any case, I think the zwiebold is the weakest entry in the five presented.
Race #3 - KROHLVAR
The krohlvar is best described as a barbaric, humanoid warthog. This one had a nice "bonus" feature: when you click on the illustration, a box pops up that describes a new racial weapon, the kra-borak (basically an overlarge mace with a bumpy metal sphere for a "head"). This could easily have just been added as extra text, but I suspect the designers were having some fun and experimenting with the possibilities inherent in the PDF form. The illustration is well done, and the description of the race is pretty much what you'd expect of a race of warthog-men barbarians.
Race #4 - FRENAQI
I think I know why frenaqi were saved for the Five Free Races PDF - while an interesting race, their background states that they're not the most adventurous sorts, and thus make better NPCs than PCs. That makes sense: best to keep the Races of Evernor filled with races that players might want to use as PCs. Frenaqi are stout, four-armed humanoids with no necks. They excel at manual labor, and are found in most large settlements. Not the most exciting race, to be sure, and if a player is intrigued by the possibility of playing a member of a four-armed race there are other, more exciting examples in the Races of Evernor PDFs. (Races of Evernor III, in particular, has a xornlike baturgahla that would fit the bill just fine). This one also has a pop-up box when you click on the illustration, this time detailing a frenaqi alcoholic beverage - not as exciting as a new weapon, but it adds some flavor (no pun intended). There was one little problem I noted in the sample NPC stats, though: his AC should be 18, not 17 (taking his +3 Dex bonus into account).
Race #5 - DALNOY
I found the dalnoy to be particularly intriguing, as they're basically a race of intelligent spiders! A dalnoy would definitely make for an interesting PC. However, there are some rather "non-spidery" traits that accompany the dalnoy: I never would have thought to have given this spider race a love of music and beautiful singing voices! (The pop-up from the illustration details the dalnoy's voices and bird-mimicking abilities.) Ian also toned down the normal "spidery" stuff by making the dalnoy's poison very mild (although he also includes a feat that makes it a bit more potent) and limiting the creature's web attack to once per day. I was a bit surprised to see a mere "16 points" listed in the sample NPC stats, under the heading "Skills," as all of the other sample NPCs were fully statted out, including how many ranks they had in their specific skills. This just struck me as kind of odd.
Five Free Races does a fine job of illustrating the types of information you'll find in the three Races of Evernor PDFs, and as such serves not only as "free swag" to those interested but also as a sort of advertisement for the Races of Evernor line. Editing and proofreading were really top-notch this time around; I found only one typographical error in the whole lot (a sentence missing a period at the end, big whoop) besides that AC problem with the sample frenaqi NPC. On the layout front, I think the double-justification made for some weird-looking spaces between words (especially in narrow columns on the sides of the central artwork), and occasionally two letters in a word would be "squooshed" into some overlap, but everything was legible and easy to read. All in all, a good job! I give it an overall "4 (Good)" and highly recommend it for anyone interested in adding a new race or two (or more) to their campaign.
