WARNING: This review contains spoilers.
The Heart of Glass
Troll Lord Games
ISBN 1-931275-14-9
80 pages (Blank inside covers, 2 pages Copyright/ToC/OGL, 1 page ad)
$16.95
I must begin by saying that I really wanted to like this book. The little bit that I had seen about it seemed interesting, and so I asked for it (and got it) for my birthday. Hopefully that wont color this review too much.
The Heart of Glass is a "Companion Book" to the Codex of Erde. It details three coastal cities that have grown into one big conglomerate, and provides an adventure to help make things interesting and give the players a reason for being there. Art ranges from below average to very good and is generally relevant to the text. Maps are hand-drawn and hand-gridded with scales, and are very good. Space usage is good. I like the layout; it looks really nice.
The Sea Towns: The detailing of the sea towns is actually the reason I wanted the book-I wanted to do a little conversion and drop them into my homebrew campaign, thus saving myself a little work. This part did not disappoint. The Heart of Glass does a very good job of presenting the Sea Towns and making them seem real. I decided to make a couple of adjustments to my homebrew campaign's history to make things sync up properly, but that wasn't a problem because I haven't started play yet, and I think the changes will enhance the campaign anyway. There will be adjustments to the module, too, of course, but for the most part it'll be a matter of changing names & races a bit. No big deal, especially since TLG went to the trouble of suggesting changes for non-Erde settings. This portion only misses a ranking of 5 because of a few editing mistakes (typos, grammar, and a few homonym errors, my favorite being orcs that "steal themselves for trouble."). 4.5
The Adventure: I should first point out that on the cover it states that the adventure is for levels 2-3, but inside it says 3-6 characters of level 3-5. I'd lean toward the upper end of the inside recommendation from what I read, but I haven't played through it to be sure.
The adventure is built into the descriptions of many of the areas. There are several different plausible entrance points, and it should be relatively easy to embroil an average group of PC's in the trouble. There is a lot of investigative work and a possibly a lot of combat, and the situation seems to be fairly dynamic. The play centers around a paladin-turned-vampire that still has a soul and is seeking an artifact that he believes will allow him to redeem himself. My one problem with this adventure is the wizard that has the artifact. She was chased from her home by a surprise vampire raid. She escaped with very little of her magic, because on the way out she threw an item that contained nearly all of her stuff (including the artifact) into a pool in her garden. Why? Now she can't go back when there's a single CR 6 vampire in her house because she's only a 14th level wizard with a borrowed spellbook and an 18th rogue friend? Oh, and did I mention that she is so incredibly beautiful and her voice so musical (despite a Charisma of 13) that she can charm the socks off of men at will? A few minor adjustments to the situation would make it much more believable. If I wasn't the one that had to make those changes, this would rate a 5. As it is, 4.5.
The Mechanics: Unfortunately, this is where the Heart of Glass really falls short. I generally just glance at stat-blocks, but in doing so I saw attack and damage bonuses that didn't match up. Thom Davis, a merchant with and "no comparable skills in combat," is a Fighter 1 with Combat Reflexes, and his "Diplomacy skill is 18," despite a Charisma of 9. 19 ranks in a cross-class skill at level 1? There's also a 60' pit trap that does 1d6 damage. Is the victim feather-falling that first 50 feet?
The Crna Ruk prestige classes presented in the book had a number of problems. First, one of the special abilities is not listed anywhere, and the ones that are there are listed in no discernable order. Some of the things in the flavor text are not reflected in the mechanics section, and some of the mechanics don't jive with the concept presented in the flavor text. (Humorously, according to the flavor text, "rouges" can take this prestige class.) Most of the stat-blocks for NPC's with the Crna Ruk (Scholar) prestige class don't meet the prerequisites for it (no Knowledge:Religion) and use the wrong abbreviation for the class (CnR(I) is used, but that denotes a different Crna Ruk prestige class that has CnR(S) as the prerequisite). The one NPC that does meet the prerequisites as well as fall in line with the flavor text manages to have 21 character levels, though I didn't see anything that explained how.
Finally, there were many things that made it look like the book was a bad conversion from 2e (things like a "Will Check against 1/2 wisdom," "Save vrs. Reflex," "0 level NPCs," and poison that does "2-20 damage save for half.")
In short, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to do a lot of work to fix the mechanics in the book. I'll need to clarify the Crna Ruk prestige classes (the idea behind them and what is there is cool enough to make it a worthwhile effort). I'll need to carefully review all the stat-blocks in the book, and probably completely redo a fair number of them. I must admit that I didn't notice any problems in the monster stat-blocks and I'm hoping that they're correct since they were most likely copied from the SRD. Big fat 1.
Conclusion: Troll Lord Games needs to develop a better grasp of 3e mechanics. Had the mechanics of the book been as good as the rest, I would have happily rounded up and given this book a 5. As it is, it gets a 3, and only because I'm willing to fix the mechanics. However, if you aren't willing to work on the mechanics and you aren't willing to ignore the discrepencies, then the Heart of Glass is not for you.
