By Jack "the Knife" - Guest Reviewer, d20 Magazine Rack
If a friend just invited you to play D&D with his group, this (other than the Player’s Handbook) is the book for you. If your character is already established, you should probably give this one a pass. Basically, the Hero Builder’s Guidebook from Wizards of the coast is a tutorial that takes you from rolling your ability scores and selecting a race and class to fleshing out your character’s past and planning his future. The book is 64 pages and retails for $16.95.
Chapter one takes an in-depth look at rolling your ability scores. This seems very odd to me as I can think of absolutely no use for this kind of knowledge. Topics discussed include why the 4d6 method is clearly better than the old 3d6 method, the odds of rolling a natural 18, the hopeless rules, and actually assigning scores to your abilities. If I am not mistaken, this chapter falls under the hopeless rule.
The next chapter proves to be much more useful, mainly due to the fact that it is not an in-depth look at rolling your ability scores. Actually, the new chapter focuses on the bread and butter of D&D (other than rolling 1d20)—your race and class. Right on the first page of this chapter is an incredibly useful table that should be in the Player’s Handbook—Standard Racial Types. This table is two columns wide. The first column lists the major races and the second lists what the stereotypical character of that race would be like. For example-- and elf is graceful, carefree, timeless, and magical.
There is a second table on this same page that is also very useful called Racial Modifiers. This table is three columns wide-- the first column lists the race, the second lists the ability score adjustments, and the third lists the effects of the adjustments. Let us look at the elf again-- he gains a +2 to dexterity and receives a -2 penalty to constitution. According to the listing in column three, these modifiers mean that the elf gets a +1 bonus to AC and a +1 chance to hit on ranged attacks in exchange for one less hit point per level. There is also a worthwhile sidebar on this same page that explains how, with a natural ability roll of 18, a character can take advantage of the ability adjustments for his race and end up with a 20 on an ability score at first level. Page 7 gets an A+.
The rest of this chapter, another 28 pages, gives a short description of each race and class combination available. Each listing tells the advantages and disadvantages of using the race-class combo and gives advice about assigning your ability scores. There are also many “variants” which a quick ways to setup a character with a short background and motivation. My favorite is the half-orc variant Zhack-Tar—caller of the dead. When someone in the community dies, it is the Zhack-Tar’s job to call out to the spirit world to tell them of the deceased and his impending arrival in hopes that the stories of his deeds in life will serve him in his spirit life. I don’t see why a race other than half-orc couldn’t use this variant too. Other variants I found of interest include the Runeweaver (dwarven cleric), the Professional (human wizard), and the Professional in the Science of Protective Locks and Theft Deterrents (gnome rouge).
The next chapter is for defining your character’s background. According to the book, there are five major aspects of your character’s background—home, family, instruction, life events, and relationships. This chapter is filled with charts that will, after taking into account your character’s race, take you through each of these five aspects with the help of a d100. None of these charts are so particularly interesting that I feel the need to write about them (with one exception), although they do provide an easy way to make up your character’s history.
The one exception I mentioned a moment ago is Table 12: Ancestors of Note. This table is used to determine if your great uncle kidnapped his cruel boss and tortured him in his basement for five days, finally being caught while dumping the body in the local ravine after he accidentally killed his captive by subjecting him to small amounts of poison he personally harvested from spiders he found in that very same basement. Well, it doesn’t go into that much detail, but you get the point. At the end of the chapter, the authors even treat us to an example background created using the tables throughout-- allowing the reader to see how well all the bits and pieces of collected data fit together to make a spiffy little character history. How thoughtful.
Chapter five is a glorified alignment test. It asks a total of thirty-six questions divided into six categories with six questions each. The test takes into account how your character would react in example situations involving his family, friends, community, country, ethics on crime, and ethics in business. Every time an answer goes against the things a paladin would hold dear, you take one step toward chaotic evil. Interestingly enough, I took the test under the guise of my character Tanith “the Unforgiving” and found that although he is chaotic evil, in several situations he would act as a good aligned character would. The authors suggest that you use this test on a character about every three levels so you can watch for signs of alignment drifting. Alignment drifting, as a phenomenon, can be either a good or a bad thing, depending on whether or not it’s intentional.
Chapter six: “Planning Your Future” kicks off with a short pep talk about choosing a career path such as the ten listed in this chapter or setting your sights on a particular prestige class. Among the ten career paths included in the chapter are the counterspeller and the ever popular necromancer (now fully compatible with clerics). My favorite career path is the research wizard, who alters existing spells to suit his needs and can eventually master the art of creating entirely new spells.
Finally, this book wraps up with a chapter on names. According to this chapter, there are three do’s and three don’ts of character naming such as don’t use everyday names and do twist a word or location into a name. The chapter goes on to explain that a character can have nicknames and surnames— thank you Captain Obvious. Finally the book ends with its most useful material-- a large list of names broken down by race. Many of my PCs have picked their names from this very list. Super nice.
All in all, this book is certainly not worth its cover price despite its occasional sparks of brilliance, like page 7, the list of names, and the Zhack-Tar variant. However, if you and a group of your friends are planning on starting a D&D campaign with no prior experience, then—as a group—this may be the book for you.
To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
