The Thieves' World Player's Guide is a terrific book. Ninety percent of it is top notch. I had no doubt the setting info would be good, so I won't speak at length on those points. I wasn't sure if a d20 adaptation of Thieves' World would work -- thankfully, it does. The new core classes are welcome additions to the sword-n-sorcery genre and the prestige classes are evocative of the setting. The references to characters from the series as examples of a particular class (or multi-class) was a nice touch. I also liked the approach taken with culture and background to differentiate between the various human cultures.
The spellcasting rules are a thing of sheer beauty and the modifications to combat are good. I felt they could have gone farther with combat, but since I use Conan as my baseline ruleset, it wasn't a big deal. However, since this is a book that is intended to work in conjunction with the Player's Handbook, I can understand why they only made modifications they felt were necessary. As a long-time fan of the series and setting, I anxiously await the rest of the line.
I do have one gripe about the book though. As I stated, the book is not intended to replace the Player's Handbook - this isn't an OGL game. I wish that it would have been for one specific reason, however. Although the spellcasting system is a work of art, the standard spell lists were just modified to fit the 4 new spellcasting classes. And this is where the ball got dropped. Eight chapters of d20 gold get smacked by Chapter Nine: Spells. This chapter obviously did not receive enough attention. Although the modifications to cure spells were well done, they appear to be the only spells that received more than a cursory glance. Exhibit A to this point is the 10-level Healer of Mishipri prestige class, one of the best Prestige Classes I've ever seen and a perfect d20 rendition of the source material from the series.
The problem? The Priest, a replacement of the cleric, gets Remove Disease and Neutralize Poison as part of the standard priest spell list - just like it's D&D cleric counterpart at 6th and 8th level, respectively. The Healer of Mishipri? Level limits on skill level will keep a character from entering the Prestige Class before 3rd level. The ability to make antidotes doesn't come until 5th level in the class (character level = 8) and the ability to make an elixir to treat disease isn't available until 7th level in the class (character level = 10). Why enter into a class that uses mundane methods when I can have magical alternatives two levels earlier?
[I never understood why curing diseases (like say cancer) was easier than neutralizing poison (say from a snake bite) in D&D in the first place, but that's a different gripe.]
If I were writing a review, this would cause an otherwise perfect book to lose a star. Final score = 4 stars.
I realize that writing a list of spells from the ground up would be a major undertaking. If the book were an OGL title, I would levy a much bigger strike for not doing one as was done with the Conan RPG. However, the spell list could have been scrubbed better to remove spells that conflicted with the source material. I mean, what are healing spells doing on a general priest list in a setting with limited healing?
Here's hoping that TW does well enough to warrant its own spell supplement in the future. If that's not in the cards, then maybe between The Black Company and Thieves' World, Green Ronin releases a variant magic book that includes setting-specific spells and lists in addition to alternative spellcasting systems.
Azgulor
