Gods
Gods is one of AEG's "one word title" supplements targeted at standard d20 system fantasy games. Gods introduces religions for a number of d20 system fantasy races, complete with clerical domains, prestige classes and sample characters.
A First Look
Gods is a 160 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $24.95. This is a fairly decent price for the size, especially considering the interior text is fairly dense.
The cover is blue, and done in a similar style to prior books in the series, with piping and lettering that is shaded to appear raised. The front cover are depicts a group of human-looking worshipers congregating around a an altar and idol that appears much like a minotaur.
The interior is black and white. The interior art depicts some of the inhuman priests, their items, and places where they dwell. The art is about of average quality, with few specimens that struck me as exceptionally good or bad.
Most of the maps have a grid, though there is no scale or key. In the introduction it states that you should assume 5 feet except for the maps of temples of particularly large races.
A Deeper Look
Gods is a sourcebook for religions, primarily religions of monstrous races. The chapters are broken up approximately by race and include
- Barbarian tribes (of humans)
- Bugbears
- Dark elves
- Deep dwarves
- Giants (all giants follow the same deities according to Gods)
- Gnolls
- Goblins
- Hobgoblins
- Impossible things (abberations and magical beasts)
- Kobolds
- Lizardfolk
- Minotaurs
- Ogres
- Orcs
- Sylvan forces
- Trolls
The deities presented in these chapters are totally new (as they must be since none of the Wizards of the Coast deities are open content.) Of course, owing to the character of the race, some of the deities are similar in disposition to the WotC deities of these races.
Each of these chapters has the same general structure. The nature of deities is outlined, including the division of worshipers, goals, spheres of influence, rituals, holy symbols, and places of worship. The rules material is presented, including one or more sample clerics, one or more new domains (possibly with new spells), one or more prestige classes appropriate to divine spellcasters following the deities in question, and a variety of magic items created and/or used by worshipers. Each chapter also has a map of a holy site of the race in question.
For the most part, the new prestige classes are well thought out and interesting, such as dark elf spider warriors and poison masters, hobgoblin servants of the one, orc keepers of secrets and underworld druids.
There are a few problems, however. There are some nonstandard or flawed attack advancement schemes (such as the barbarian medicine man and kobold broken) and save advancement (like the puppet in AEG's Undead, the Gnoll returned has a non-existent will save advancement, which I consider an unnecessary and inappropriate way to express the lack of mental resilience of a class.) The ogre chaos champion, which has both good BAB advancement and spell advancement, as well as a good selection of class abilities, strikes me as a bit generous. Finally, the humanoid hunter has a class ability at 10th level that lets them perform a death blow once per round that, if the attack hits and the save fails, kills the victim outright; it seems to me the usage of this ability should be a lot more limited.
Conclusion
Overall, I found Gods to be a very promising book. Unlike the recent WotC Deities and Demigods, the book focuses on the followers, who are far more likely to come into play. The new assortment of deities can add a new spin on these races beyond the same old deities that have been recycled in the book since the first edition of the AD&D game.
The prestige classes herein would make great villains in a game, though as noted above I would feel compelled to tweak some of them. If you are also using AEG's Monster, this book would be a marvelous companion to that book, whether to add more oomph to your villains (such as, say, Black Orc keepers of secrets) or actually using the classes for PCs.
Finally, there are a total of 34 new domains for use in the game here (though it appears that one of the mentioned domains, lust, was not included. Though some of these are unique to the deities they represent, there are plenty of domains that would be perfectly appropriate to adapt to deities in your campaign, such as ambition, betrayal, corruption, diplomacy, fear, fury, gluttony, hatred, havoc, night, pain, secrets, solace, storm, vengeance, and weather. However, some aspects of some domains need some work. For example, one domain inflicts a whopping -1 per level to an opponent's saves, and others have abilities that have save DCs that progress at 1/level vice 1/2 / level.
-Alan D. Kohler
