Heroes of High Favor: Dwarves -- Nioe Job!

[philreed]

Great work, guys. The cover sucked me in and forced me to buy it (very professional job) and the goal of the book (to give players lots of crunch) was accomplished.

http://www.philipjreed.com/dwarves.html

http://www.badaxegames.com

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Thanks for the review, Philip.

To answer your question about the masterwork components, if you're the GM, I can't honestly say you're missing anything by not including them in your game.

However, if you have dwarf players in your game, it would be nice to give them something to do with their Craft skill. Do your players avoid having a high Craft skill? I think it's a shame that a dwarf PC would invest his skill points in anything else, especially since there are so few fighter skills that really make a lot of sense for dwarves. Swim? Ride? Jump? (A notable scene from LOTR notwithstanding!)

The rules certainly won't break your game, since it is generally the GM that controls how much down-time the PCs have, and masterwork crafting takes a long, long time. Even so, it gives the player something to look forward to, banging away on his custom breastplate for a few weeks at a time when he can spare it. Come the day that the breastplate is finished, the player can be every bit as proud as the wizard who has researched a new spell, the bard who finishes his magnum opus, etc.

Wulf

 

[JoeGKushner]

One of the things that I was pleasantly surprised at, and couldn't mention in my review because I didn't have it at the time, is the lack of crossover with Hammer & Helm. The two books can almost be used wholy together without any overlap or issues arising from crossover PrCs, feats, uses for skills, runes, etc... Haven't got the Q. Dwarf yet so I don't know if it holds true for all three books but dwarven players (and NPCs!) have lots of great options open to them.

 

[Frilf]

I'll probably pick a copy up, then. I was concerned about the amount of duplicated material from H&H in Dwarves, but I'll give it a go. Thanks for the heads up, Joe.

Cheers, all!
Ian

 

[philreed]

Duplicated material . . .

I have no idea since I'm really not a "dwarf man" and only bought the book because it was a great cover from a first-time publisher.

Is the Half-Orc book on schedule for October? After this one I'm very interested in checking that out.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I'm pretty anxious to see how it goes as well. Dwarves had two sections, runes and masterwork components, that I'm curious to see how they're replaced in the orc books. Wulf has mentiond some rules for 'savage' weaponry consisting of bones, fur, etc... Maybe spirit-binding rules or something? Ah well, October isn't that far away.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'm pretty anxious to see how it goes as well. Dwarves had two sections, runes and masterwork components, that I'm curious to see how they're replaced in the orc books.

I had answered this question over at Mortality, but I can repeat it here.

Just to run through the list in my head:

Feats (including Rage feats), tribal/totem focus (more synergistic-type bonuses for following the feat path of your tribe/totem), craft savage weapons and armor, more masterwork components (made from hides and such), shoddy craftsmanship, animal breeding and crossbreeding, using wilderness lore to recover magical components, poison, and other useful items from prey.

Then of course the Prestige Classes, followed lastly by the short section on roleplaying tips.

 

[Leopold]

I was nice enough to run into WULF at gencon. He gave me a copy to put into PCGen, so expect your favorite dwarven classes to appear in PCGen for your PC building pleasure!


Wulf: contact me offlist if you can there are some things I want to ask you!