Heroes of High Favor: Elves

[Messageboard Golem]

Ancient, alien, immortal, as angels to men, the elves have lived since the world was young and magic was new. For millenia they have studied the arcane arts, setting themselves apart from the petty squabbles of lesser races. What mortal could contest with the oldest and wisest of races, the most powerful of all wizards?

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Heroes of High Favor: Elves is the latest offerings from Bad Axe Games. The series features each race and the possibilites of multiclassing that each combination with the race's favored class brings. The books are smaller than standard RPG books at 6x9, but this is part of their charm. Bad Axe books tend to pack a lot of crunch in their pages. This book is longer than the others in the series at 78 pages, but the price point is still $9.95.

The cover is quite striking, with a wreath of brown leaves covering a blue design, which I soon learned was the Elven Arcane Circle, part of the rules concerning specialist wizards. The interior was on par with the rest of the series, with demonstrative and original artwork along with cleanly formatted text.

Chapter 1 is a brief introduction, describing the contents of the book. It discusses the perspective that elves' near immortality brings them, the nature of being a wizard, and the structure of the prestige classes each relating to a wizard multiclass.

Next we come to feats and skills. There are several interesting items here. Many of them relate to the Favored Terrain feat, which can allow the elf to change his free weapon proficiencies (such as trading Long Sword or Rapier for Scimitar for desert elves) and opening up other terrain feats. The only one that gives me pause is Improved Expertise, allowing for damage bonus on finessed weapons, but with the relatively high BAB requirement I don't think it will be too much of an issue. Arcane feats allow additional flavor for specialist wizards, giving each small perks that no other wizard can access. This is something I feel was needed by the 3e rules, the specialists aren't as distinct as they used to be. The Spell Wards are another useful and interesting addition, allowing a wizard to prepare a spell defensively and have it automatically counter, turn on the caster, or even be absorbed when that spell is cast upon the elf. It is reasonably balanced in my opinion, as these are done in a chain and have a caster level requirement.

The skills expand on what was done in Heros of High Favor: Dwarves. These craft skill uses will allow an elf to make special arrows and bows, as well as armor and weapons that elves might use quite a bit, such as armor that reduces spell failure chances.

Chapter 3 is Lost Arcana, detailing some new magic rules. The first is a section on specialist wizards. This is centered on the arcane circle, used as the cover for the book. It assigns each school a point value, and the specialist must give up a school or schools worth as many points as their preferred school. If they give up more, they can buy special abilities, such as an extra spell slot per level (in addition to the one they already get) or a bonus to saves against their chosen school.

The other section in Lost Arcana deals with Power Nexuses and Ley Lines. Essentially, a Power Nexus is a center of magical energy. It could be anything from ruins of an elven city, a circle of standing stones, or a crossroads. Ley lines are lines of energy that connect the power nexuses. I personally can't wait to incorporate this into a game. In addition to putting a lot more emphasis on the history and geography of the campaign world, it gives wizards a good use for their Knowledge (arcana) scores. It could have large implications for the campaign world, as the author points out and cautions the player to go over these rules with the DM before building a character around them.

Next comes the prestige classes. Each class is based on the combination of wizard along with another class. These are well done, and tend to avoid the trap of giving full spellcasting levels. While almost all of them do advance somewhat, most are at half the normal rate. Others may grant +1 spellcaster level, but this is for classes such as the Grand Theurgist, who must split them between his cleric and wizard classes. Another interesting one is the take on the elven fighter/wizard, the Veteran Wizard. He only gains wizard levels at half normal rate, and his BAB increase is not as good as a warrior, but he gains the ability to cast buff spells only on himself at a level lower and to ignore some arcane spell failure.

Chapter 5 is the two pages of role-playing information we are used to in the series. It very neatly describes the elven archetypes and discusses near-immortality. If you want pages and pages on what color elven underwear is or what the elves do on their holy days, you won't find it here. The author leaves these details to the DMs to determine to make his book useful to the largest number of players. I think its a good decision.

The book closes with an appendix on spell design. The rules are a guideline to help DMs and players iron out the level and effects of a new spell. They look very flexible and simple. You simply apply various templates to the spell to determine the proper level. For instance, say I go to my DM and I want a Fire Bolt spell. It shoot a ray of fire at a single target in close range and deals 1d8 damage per level. This gives me a third level spell. You can play with the numbers as well. If I give the spell a save for half damage I can boost the range to Medium for instance. It is emphasized that these are only guidelines and the DM will of course go over any spell before it enters play.

Overall, I'm very happy with the book. Not only does it leave me with several characters I'd love to play, but lots of information that I'll use as a DM. Even if you aren't a big elf fan, the rules on ley lines and specialist wizards are well worth the price. I consider this to be the best book in the series this far, and can't wait to see more.

 

[Krug]

This is a review copy. Product was not playtested.

Elves have become boring. There's more supplements centered around Drow than there are for your regular elf, but the third book in the Heroes of High Favor series manages to do a good job of putting the zip back into the Elf. Like other HoHF books the emphasis centers around the favored class of the featured race, and in this case it's the Wizard. Inside you'll find loads of Feats, rules and Prestige clases to make them more interesting, and as a bonus there's spell-creation rules included as an appendix.

After the standard intro, it's yer standard Feats and Skills. There's a dozen skills for the Elf, including Life Sculptor who can create items right from natural materials, eliminating raw material cost but taking four times as long to create. Arcane Feats adds more flavor to Wizards, and there's an interesting variant on counterspelling worth checking out here; Spell Wards. Besides counterspelling, you can even turn a spell against its caster or absorb the spell energy for yourself. The short section on skills introduces new armor and arrows for Elves.

Chapter 3 introduces Lost Arcana, and concepts such as The Arcane Circle or Badaxe's distinctive take on the various schools of Magic. The other half of this chapter introduces Ley Lines and Power Nexuses. A Power Nexus is a repository of great magical energy and Ley Lines are the 'wires' that connect them together. Spellcasters can tap into the power of the Ley Lines and Nexus to enhance their spells. and even cast spells across power nexus. I think this is a great device that adds much flavour to a campaign, though a DM might have to consider implementing them carefully. It would have been great to see this section expanded further, as they could become a major campaign component.

Chapter 4 introduces Prestige Classes for the Elf; all the PrCs here arise from combinations of the Wizard class with another class. I liked the Ley Runner (Wizard-Barbarian combo who can tap into the Ley lines), the Spell-Shikar (Wizard-Ranger combo which can use their arcane skills to track the favoured enemy; even across planes!) and the Veteran-Wizard (a fighter-wizard combo who can certain power-enhancing spells at a lower level to beef himself up). The PrCs failed to excite me as much as those in HoHF: Orcs, where the PrCs were very creative. Nevertheless, the classes here are well-thought out and interesting.

Next up are two pages on Elven roleplaying, which most experienced players will skim. As a bonus, there's an appendix with rules on Spell creation. It goes through all the various spell schools and goes into detail how to go about making a new spell. I would have liked to see some examples and a few spells created using these guidelines.

HoHF: Elves maintains the high standards of previous BadAxe books. For the most part, there's more good stuff for Wizards than Elves, and I think that is a good thing. The Power Nexuses and Ley Lines rules are useful for anyone who wants to use them in their campaign. After elves have been pulled in different directions with the emphasis on Elves as treehugging archer types of bladedancers, HoHF literally and emphatically puts the magic back into the elves.

 

[JoeGKushner]

For those who haven’t read any of the Heroes of High Favor books, which now include dwarves, half-orcs and elves, you’ve been missing some excellent player resources. Each book has a slew of feats and prestige classes based around the favored class of the race in question. With Elves, the author goes a little further, providing even more options for the game that all races can use.

The book starts off with the short introduction similar to past books providing a broad overview of what the series and this book is about. It then leaps right into Chapter Two, Feats and Skills. Some of these feats are general and fighter type, such as Bow Mastery, where youget a bonus with all bows which you have proficiency with. It’s a bonus by affinity, as you already have to have weapon focus and weapon specialization with a bow. Others are more race specific like Favored Terrain where you get a bonus to skill checks in favored terrain and if taken at first level, can substitute your standard elf weapons for more appropriate ones. For example, if you take Desert, you can switch out the longsword/rapier for the scimitar.

Another feat that caught my eye was Improved Weapon Finesse where you get damage bonus based on Dexterity instead of strength. While it doesn’t tip the scales of balance to the athletic type completely, it does help to even the odds for those players who don’t want the lumbering brutes.

For those looking for something more, there are a whole slew of Arcane Feats for spellcasters. Take Elemental Penetration. You reduce an enemy’s energy resistance by 1 point per caster level but the spell is one slot higher than normal. Good deal eh? How about Gifted Healer where you learn Healing spells from the cleric spell list, but they’re three slots higher? Still a good deal for those parties desperate for a cleric.

Another idea introduced here, Spell Wards, add a lot of depth to the campaign. Take Spell Ward: Turning, you turn a spell back onto the original caster as if you used spell turning. Spell Ward Immunity allows you to basically ignore a spell that you memorized as a spellward and isn’t gone with a single use.

For skills, I was pleased to see a return to masterwork options. Here, you get several add-ons to standard goods. Take Craft, Bowmaking. You can now make Seeking Bows that have half the normal range penalty or arrow resiliency where that arrows have a better chance of being recovered. Not your style? How about Craft, Weaponsmithing where you can make Elven War Arrows that have a critical threat of 19-20 but do less damage?

Chapter Three, Lost Arcana, really opens up some options for the campaign and GMs should read through it a few times and write down some of the implications these options will have prior to using them. For example, there are options to specialize in a school to an even greater degree and with more options. By breaking the schools up into tiers, the author has attempted and to me, succeeded in providing some alternatives to the standard uses.

Now when I mentioned that customization, it comes with a benefit if you overcompensate. Say that you take more opposition schools than you need to, or an opposition school that’s greater than your own school, you have excess point you can use to gain bonuses that range from extra spells gained per level to extra spell slots or reducing the amount of spell slot penalties you pay for meta-magic feats.

Now that alone gives a GM plenty to think about. For those who always wanted those low magic worlds or those who want invokers capable of calling down some truly dangerous spells, you now have more tools to get those options done. The author however, has a little more for you.

See, Ley Lines and Power Nexuses are also included here. By anchoring to a Ley Line, the caster can improve his caster level or even use the level of the power nexus instead of his own level for powering spells. The options are interesting and add a lot of potential to any game, but the GM better think about how many of these ley lines and power nexuses there are and how best to use them and have some good reasons why they’ve never been used before. Of course this may loop back to the Feats section and the GM can have the player be one of the first through the use of the feat, Create Power Nexus, to actually tap into these powerful options.

One of the largest parts of the book is its prestige classes. Now for those who haven’t been following the series, one of the ideas is that it takes the favored class of each race, in this case wizards, and applies it to every other class so that you can do the prestige class in question by alternating classes or by selecting the prestige class in question. It’s broken up into alphabetical order by core class so the first PrC we get is the Ley Runner, a barbarian-wizard.

Each prestige class starts off with name and background, moving into its role in elven society, and role with the adventuring party, before showing how to play the character class by multi-classing. After that, it goes into the Prestige Class. Unlike many Mongoose PrCs, these are all ten level PrCs.

One of the combinations I was looking forward to most was the fighter-wizard. How many GMs out there wouldn’t give an eye to go back in time and stop the horror of the 2nd edition Bladesinger kit from ever coming out? Well, the Veteran Wizard doesn’t have the panache or coolness attached to that PrC but it provides a viable alternative. They gain spells every other level, can use armor a little more easier than most mages, bonus feats, either metamagic or fighter and even get weapon specialization.

Another two I enjoyed are the Seneschal of the Great Library and the Spell-shikar. The former is a monk-wizard, a combination that seems a natural fit, two scholarly classes becoming one while the latter, the wizard-ranger as a hunter of evil, especially ancient evils, intrigued me.

One of the things I was worried about was that all of these classes would be overpowered due to adding one level of spellcasting ability in addition to special abilities. Most of them get spells every other level though so it works out well for the most part in terms of balance. For example, the Seneschal has a spell restriction where he can’t learn spells with an energy subtype unless it’s a touch based spell and only gets spells every other level.

As is the case with previous books, there is a brief section on roleplaying. It includes a few stereotypes to help players get into the mindset of an elf, but as is the case with previous books, that’s not the focus of this manual.

Normally the book would end about here but the author has given us some extra goodies this time, a section on Spell Design that’s useable not just with the elves, but with any spell caster. It goes through each school, providing ideas on what level a spell should be based on range, duration, damage, and other specifics. For example, in Abjuration, if the type of protection is physical of a certain type, its worth less points than physical of all types. It’s an excellent addition to the d20 game and I look forward to not only using it myself, but also encouraging my players to take a shot at designing their own spells with it. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as having a self-designed spell beat an enemy instead of relying on the old standards.

Part of the book does suffer from not being specific with the elves though. Because it makes no effort to break the races into high, gray, dark, wood and other branches, you never know which prestige classes are meant for which race, although some of them should be fairly obvious.

In addition, I hate to admit this, but part of me judges a product based on what it looks like. Now the cover is perhaps the best in the series, but the internal art hasn’t improved. While I like Andrew Hale’s elves better than his orcs, the quality isn’t top-notch in my opinion. Because this is a niche product, it has to compete with other books but fortunately, those with the top notch art, like Fantasy Flight Games and Green Ronin, haven’t done elves yet so he’s in the clear, but take a look at one of the more recent Malhavok books or FFG books. Top notch art by many artists. Even Mongoose, whose artwork I usually hate, has come a long way with the addition of different artists. In this case, the lack of variety is holding the series back a little visually.

If we had more play with the reviews, this would be a 4 and a half star rating. Elves is the best book in the Heroes of High Favor series, packed with extra pages at the same price, and is a worthy addition to any gamers collection who not only enjoys playing elves, but enjoys options for their wizards. It is a solid product that’ll open up many new options not only with feats and prestige classes, but new uses for old skills and magical research options.

 

[Psion]

Heroes of High Favor: Elves

The third book in Badaxe Games' Heroes of High Favors series of d20 rules supplements targeted at players, Heroes of High Favor: Elves provides new classes, feats, and other options primarily for elvish characters.

Heroes of Hight Favor: Elves is written by Badaxe Games' Benjamin Durbin.

A First Look

Heroes of High Favor: Elves is an 80 page perfect-bound softcover book with small (about half-sheet) sized pages priced at $9.95.

The cover of the book has a leafy motif framing a glowing blue circle with runes inscribed on it. The circle represents a diagram within the book diagraming the relationship of the eight classical d20 System schools of magic.

The interior is black-and-white, featuring art by Andrew Hale. The illustrations look fairly good, but some of the pictures look a little harsh and mannish for elves, not to mention looking a little cartoony.

The interior text font is fairly small, and the margins are thin, but the double paragraph spacing is used.

A Deeper Look

As with the prior books in the series, the bulk of the material in Heroes of Hight Favor: Elves revolves around the favored class of the race, in this case wizard. The book is very light on flavor text, diving straight into mechanics that you can use in a game and relying largely on the DM to sweat the details. As many time pre-written background details are hard to reconcile with an established campaign, I don't consider this a bad approach.

The book kicks off with a selection of feats appropriate primarily for elves. Half of the spells are fairly general in nature. For example Bow Mastery provides the character with a +1 bonus to attack with all bows that stack with the weapon focus feat's enchantment (which is a prerequisite.) Favored Terrain is a type of feat used in prior books in the series which makes a fresh appearance here; this feat allows the elf to exchange his weapon feats with ones more appropriate to the terrain, and additionally provide a bonus to skill checks when in the favored terrain. Improved Weapon Finesse allows a character to use their dexterity instead of strength when dealing damage with the appropriate weapon. Tree Stepper, which will appeal to you if you are a Record of Lodoss War fan, allows the character to easily move among the branches.

The book also has a new category of feat called Arcane Feats. The book provides the option of limiting the feats to arcane spellcasters or (more specifically) to limit them to specific specialists to enhance the flavor of the feats; each feat lists a school of magic with which it is associated. Some of these are fairly potent and interesting. Mutable Spell allows a cater to prepare two transmutation spells in the same slot, and choose which spell to cast at the time of casting. Piercing Spell allows a character to half the caster level of a damaging evocation spell for most purposes in exchange for increasing either DC or spell penetration of the spell by one half the character's caster level. Gifted Healer allows the wizard to prepare clerical healing spells as wizard spells of 3 levels higher.

However, my favorite feats in the book have to be the sub-category of arcane feats called Spell Wards. The most basic spell ward is Spell Ward: Counterspell, which allows the caster to prepare a spell as a dedicated counterspell that automatically triggers if the character is targeted with the specified spell. Other feats in this chain allow turning of the spell, absorbing it to power another spell, and immunity (which operates the same as the couterspell, but is not expended when the spell is countered.)

The brief skills section introduces a new knowledge category (elves), as well as adding new uses to craft skills. Similar to Heroes of High Favor: Dwarves, this section introduces new possible effects of masterworking items, such as adding fire resistance or reducing weight of wooden items, reducing the spell failure percentage of armor, and increasing the range and reducing the range penalties of bows. Of these, I found all but the last to be usable. The seeking masterwork quality halves the range penalty, which seems to me far too drastic a benefit for a non-magical modification.

The third section of the book, Lost Arcana, presents two sets of variant rules dealing with arcane spellcasting: specialist wizards and ley lines.

The first section, specialist wizards, provides rules for a character who wishes to further specialize in a specific school of magic. If a character is willing to choose more opposition schools than outlined in the core rules, the character may gain additional benefits related to skills of that school. Depending on how many and which opposition schools are taken, the character may gain benefits in the specialized school such as improved caster level, improved saves versus the school in question, reduced cost of metamagic with the school, free heightening of spells, and even the ability to spontaneously cast spells in the specialty.

The next section, arguably the gem of the book, provides rules for Ley Lines and Power Nexuses, rules that are often referred to in classical magic, but rarely touched upon in the game. Under these rules, an arcane spellcaster (with the proper skill rolls) can anchor a ley line and use it to enhance their casting level of a spell, but entails the risk of losing spells if the appropriate skill checks fail. Nexuses are even more potent and ley lines, allowing less risk and more potent results, such as defraying the cost of metamagic. Other interesting effects are possible, such as having a spell cast at one nexus take effect at another.

As with all previous books in the series, the book provides 12 prestige classes, one corresponding roughly to each possible multiclass with the race's favored class, in this case wizard. Each concept is put forth as being a general concept that you can realize by playing the multiclass combination, but the prestige class provide an alternate or more specialized version of the concept. The classes (and the multiclass combination they spring from) are as follows:

-Ley runner (barbarian/wizard): After seeing the attempt at combining barbarian and paladin into a workable prestige class in Heroes of High Favor: Half-Orcs, I became convinced that some class combinations well never lend themselves to a workable concept. I feared that this would be an example of the same in this book. I was wrong.

The Ley Line Runner plays of off the ley line rules introduced earlier in the book. The ley line runner is at home in the wilderness and trained to take advantage of ley lines to facilitate rapid travel between elven settlements. The ley line runner has slow arcane spellcasting advancement and more rages per day, but there signature ability is to run much faster than the norm along ley lines.

-Arcanologist (bard/wizard): The arcanologist is specialist in uncoverng ancient lore. The arcanologist is more bard than wizard; they continue to advance in spellcasting as bards, but may cast wizard spells using their bard slots. The arcanologist gains bonus spells that aid in divination of ancient treasure as well as being expert at using magical devices.

-Arcane Theurgist (cleric/wizard): A more basic combination, the arcane theurgist continues to advance is spellcasting, those these additional levels must be split between cleric and wizard spellcasting level. The theurgists has poor combat abilities, but unlike a simple multiclass cleric/wizard, continues with the turn undead ability and the character's familiar advances at half the normal rate, plus the character gains some spell enhancing divine abilities, such as being able to expend turning attempts to boost the power of spells and the ability to prepare wizard spells as domain spells.

-Wayshepherd (druid/wizard): As with the Ley Line Runner, this class plays of the ley line and power nexus rules presented earlier. The wayshepherd is a guardian of power nexuses. The wayshepherd continues to advance slowly as an arcane spellcaster, but also counts wayshepherd levels for the purposes of animal companions and gains additional animal companions that can be assigned to guard a power nexus. The wayshepherd eventually learns to give these guardians additional powers much as familiars.

-Veteran Wizard (fighter/wizard): The veteran wizard is the classical concept of a fighting mage. The veteran wizard has moderate fighting and slow spellcasting advancement (much as the spellsword in Tome & Blood, as well as the ability to ignore arcane spell failure for low level spells, weapon specialization, and access to the gird spell feat, which allows the veteran wizard to prepare spells with greater than personal range as personal spells and reduce their level by 1.

-Seneschal of the Great Library (monk/wizard): This class is a guardian of the great repositories of arcane knowledge maintained by the elves. The seneschal has attack and save advancement (as well as AC and unarmed combat abilities) of a monk, plus continues to advance as an arcane spellcaster at half the normal rate, which seems pretty strong. However, the seneschal is restricted from casting traditional blast type spells; elemental damage spells can only be used if they have a touch range.

-Exemplar (paladin/wizard): Much as the veteran wizard combine spell and sword against the enemies of elvenkind, so does the exemplar combine spell and sword in the righteous cause amongst the elves. The exemplar is not required to have been a paladin previously, but gains many paladin like abilities. The exemplar continues to progress in spellcasting as a paladin, but learns to prepare any mastered arcane spells as divine spells.

-Spell-shikar (ranger/wizard): Spell-shikars are ranger/wizards specialized in combating outsiders. The spell-shikar continues to advance in spellcasting as a ranger, and learns to apply favored enemy bonuses against his outsider favored enemy. This class seems a little weak to me, as few of the ranger's spells are actually useful against outsiders that would require a save or spell penetration check.

-Anarcanist (rogue/wizard): The anarcanist is a rogue specialized in wresting magic from those he considers unworthy. The anarcanist has slow spellcasting advancement, rogue-like skills, and some rogue-like class abilities. The anarcanist can sacrifice sneak attack dice for specialized strikes that make it difficult for spellcasters to cast spells.

-Outcast specialist (sorcerer/wizard): The outcast specialist is a specialist wizard that has left that path to pursue the pull of the natural arcane power of sorcerous power. The outcast specialist continues to advance as a sorcerer, but must abide by specialization school restrictions as a wizard specialist. In exchange for this, the outcast specialist gains boons in terms of addition known spells and spell slots at each level.

The power of most of these prestige classes are fairly reasonable, and some of them might even be a bit weak and unappealing. I liked the concept and execution of the ley line runner and wayshepherd, but was not so fond of the spell-shikar and exemplar, and think they are possibly too weak and have class abilities that are too limited.

Two pages of the book are devoted to roleplaying elves, familiarizing the player with the possible mindset of the long-lived elves as well as providing some typical elven archetypes.

The final section of the book is called spell design. It provides a quick system for creating spells and assessing their costs. Each school of magic has a different table - the better elements you select from the tables, the higher the resultant spell level of your spell. The system is simple and won't simulate a lot of standard D&D spells, but could be a good baseline for players wishing to design simple spells that might meet the DMs approval, but much ajudication and fudging would be required.

Conclusion

As with previous books in the series, I thought that Heroes of High Favor: Elves provided a lot of useful campaign material in a small amount of space. As mentioned, I was most impressed with the ley line rules and the ward feats, though much of the remaining material is fairly good as well.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[GameWyrd]

The hobby needs another elf race book as much as it needs a wizard class book. Welcome to Heroes of High Favor: Elves. If you know the Heroes of High Favor line from Badaxe Games then you’ll know that that opening line was a little unfair. The Heroes of High Favor are certainly not another character splat book. The meat of the small book is the chapter of multi-class based prestige classes. The favourite class for the elf race is Wizard and so the book contains ten prestige classes based on wizard multi-classes. The Anarcanist, for example, is a Wizard-Rogue inspired prestige class. In previous Heroes of High Favor it’s been the racial favourite class that’s made or broken the book. I didn’t find the dwarf book all that worthwhile because their favourite fighter class didn’t combine with any other to make any inspirational prestige classes. On the other hand, the half-orc book worked with prestige classes that included barbarian influence and this produced some really cracking ideas. Elf wizards sit in this middle of this. There are some real successes here: the Ley Runner as the Wizard-Barbarian class, the Wayshepherd as the Wizard-Druid and Spell-shikar as the Wizard-Ranger being the top three. It seems to be the tricky ones, the real challenges that brings out the best from Badaxe Games. It is the tricky combinations that are the most interesting and which makes the book worth buying.

If you’ve not seen a Heroes of High Favor before then you’ll notice the size straight away. The book is two-thirds the length and width of most other RPGs. At 78 pages long this is the largest in the series yet.

The prestige classes take up 40 of these pages. They’re good but it’s the added extra on either side that bumps the whole book up from the realms of average and into pretty good. There are two main sections that lead into the prestige classes; feats and lost arcana.

The first group of feats are safe and true; the sort of feat you could expect to find in any thought out supplement. The last bunch offers something different straight away by using optional prerequisites. The GM might decide to limit them to arcane spell casters only or, if that’s not enough, to arcane spell casters with the appropriate speciality. I was taken by this idea straight away. If you feel that the wizard specialities are just a little weak in d20 core – that a Necromancer or Illusionist really isn’t all that different from Joe Mage – then this is the book for you. Spell Wards are another bunch of tempting feats and give wizards something else to think about when assigning magic to their spell slots. These days it takes something a bit special from the ever-present feats section to grab my interest and that’s what happened here.

The chapter of lost arcana is even better as it presents rules for drawing power from ley lines and ley line nexuses. The book takes a somewhat upside down view to ley lines and nexuses in that the nexus is created first and the ley line follows. You’ll have a point of power; a standing stone circle, wizard’s tower, or even altar and that becomes the nexus. Ley lines form to link these points of power together. Drawing magic from the ley line is riskier and less effective than taking it from the point of power but in both cases the wizard has a number of choices to make as to what to do with the energy.

Also in the lost arcana chapter there’s a new approach to magic school specialities and restrictions. The hard truth of the matter is that some schools of magic are better than others and so the vanilla rules don’t quite balance. The Arcane Circle in Heroes of High Favor: Elves is a tempting alterative. The schools of magic are divided in three circles. The outer circle is the most powerful, followed by the next and the inner circle is the least powerful. To keep things simple each circle is worth a number of points. To specialise in one school you simply have to match its point value, it’s position in the Arcane Circle, with restricted schools. Oh; okay, the circle idea is a bit of a fudge. The whole thing can be worked out simply with points but the idea of the circle helps keep the flavour there. There’s more; since it’s possible to restrict more points of magic schools than you specialise in it is possible to spend the difference on other arcane powers. There are seven of these extra arcane powers (metamagic mastery, heighten spell, extra spell slot, etc) to pick from, some are more expensive than others and some can be stacked. Wizard’s can now decide how they’re going to specialise in one school of magic and not just if they want to specialise.

There’s a token page or two on elven roleplaying and then the book dives into a length appendix. This is probably the most useful appendix I’ve found in a d20 supplement to date. You have about 10 pages on spell design; that’s how to go about designing a spell, some templates and considerations.

It’s a small book and therefore a cheap book. Whereas the cost per word might not be as favourable as it could be there’s no denying that at less than $10 the absolute cost isn’t bad. In fact it’s almost worth picking the book up for just the prestige classes, for just the lost arcana chapter or even just the spell design appendix. Almost.

The direction for the HoHF line seems to be changing a little. I don’t recall the phrase "iconic multi-class" being used to describe the prestige classes. There’s still the phrase "games with grit" below the Badaxe Games logo and I think people will continue to debate what’s meant by grit. I don’t think this is a gritty book; it certainly doesn’t deal with low level elf wizards struggling in a low magic, low fantasy world. I don’t suppose that matters though. There is more flavour creeping into the book – take the Arcane Circle as a good proof of that – but that’s a good thing. Heroes of High Favor: Elves is worth buying because it adds a hefty dose of well thought out and optional game mechanics. It does so without succumbing to bland number crunching, just.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Heroes of High Favor elves is the third book in the series, Heroes of High Favor Dwarves and Heroes of High Favor Half-orcs being books one and two respectively. Heroes of High Favor Elves is also the longest book in the series and follows the same outline as the last two books. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of elves. First is the Introduction, followed by a chapter on skills and feats. The largest part of the book deals with Prestige classes, followed by ideas on roleplaying elves. The last section is the appendix which deals with spell creation.

Chapter one starts of with a small introduction describing that this book like the previous two uses the races favored class. The next section talks about the elves long life span and how that affects the ways elves act; following that is a small amount of information about the elves favored class the wizard. Also included is some general information on the prestige classes in this book and how half-elves relate to them. The last section in this chapter is what is open gaming content.

Chapter two is broken up into three sections starting of with general feats, followed by arcane feats and ending with skills. General feats include Favored Terrain which grants a +1 morale bonus to all skill checks while in your favored terrain. Pulse of the Wilds is another good feat to have it allows you to receive a bonus to your spot check equal to the CR of any hostile creature anytime the area within 30 feet. Arcane feats add a few very interesting feats (Spell Wards) besides the new metamagic feats. There are four types of spell wards, Counterspell, Turning, Absorption and Immunity. Spell wards allow you to use a spell slot in order to prepare a spell into a slot for later use as a defense. If you want to keep fireball memorized as a spell ward counterspell than any time the fireball spell is cast at you, not your general area your spell ward will go of and act as a counterspell. The next section is skills, no new skills are included just some extras for normal skills. Arcane conductor is used with Craft (Armorsmithing) and allows you to craft armor taking 5% off of the spell failure percentage.

Chapter three lost arcane is broken up into two sections. First is specialist wizards followed up by ley lines and power nexuses. The specialist wizard section has some interesting options allowing a specialist to gain even greater powers for specializing in a school, these benefits range from gaining more spells to lowering the cost of metamagic feats for spells from their favored school. Ley lines and Nexuses are a new way to add a little extra to the elves. Ley lines are magical line that run across the world, nexuses are a where ley line energy is centered (standing stones like Stonehenge etc.) By attaching themselves to a ley line or nexus spellcasters can overcharge their spells, adding a + 1 to their caster level for a ley line to the ability to use a metamagic feat to affect a spell not memorized as one. Ley lines and Nexuses are an interesting feature to use but they require a little work to be fully integrated into an existing campaign.

Chapter four is the largest part of the book dealing with prestige classes. This chapter is a full 40 pages long with four pages for each prestige class. Each one of the core classes are represented here multiclassed with the elves favored class the wizard. Two of the PRCs deal specifically with ley line and nexuses. The problem I have with these is that there are no options for using them without the new material. The rest of the PRCs are not to powerful but a lot of the abilities gained from the PRC could be gained from one or more of the core classes. The Arcanist which is a (Wizard-Rogue) gives you sneak attack, evasion and uncanny dodge in the first few levels while this is good, to take this class you would need at least two levels of rogue which would already give you evasion. Now if you took another level of rogue you would get uncanny dodge. The other PRC I had a little problem with is the Outcast (Sorcerer-Wizard). To me this makes no sense while it is true you would have a lot more lower level spells by the time you had enough power the creatures you fought would require more powerful spells. That is not to say that there is no benefits to this class, there is by taking a few levels of sorcerer you could choose spells that you would not normally memorize freeing up the slots for more combat or defensive spells. For instance a first level sorcerer knows two 1st level spells and can cast three 1st level spells, now if you knew say identify and expeditious retreat you could use your wizard spell slots for other spells.

Chapter five is two pages of ideas for roleplaying elves. There are four archetypes which are stereotypical descriptions of the elves and a small section on immortality.

The appendix is the most interesting part of the book dealing with creating new spells. This section alone is worth the buying the book, while it is not a perfect spell design system it does offer the player to create just about any spell they wish. To create the spell they have broken down each school into templates that list different parts of the spell, by adding and subtracting “steps” you can get a general level for a spell. Steps are the main parts of spells, Range, Duration etc. Once all the steps have been totaled you are basically done, all that is left is to describe the spell and research it and of course hope your GM allows it. While making simple spells are by far the easiest you can combine different schools templates, this is a little harder but can be done.

Overall this book is a good buy even if you don’t like elves; the spell design system alone will be very useful for any wizard. I also like that although they added around fifteen pages the price still stayed the same. The art is getting better but still is not the best and there were a few typos but I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Heroes Of High Favor: Elves, is a collection of rules ideas and prestige classes based around the concept of mixing the elves' favored class, Wizard, with the other available classes.

HOHF: Elves is a 78-page softcover mono book, whose size is slightly larger than A5, equating very roughly to about 48 pages of A4, and costs $9.95. There are a few small chunks of white space and the format means margins effectively reduce the amount of text comparative to A4, but there's nothing too out of line here. Whilst the style of art remains of a similar quality to that of the previous two in the HOHF series (half-orcs and dwarves), the chunky style does not capture the grace and frailty of the elf as well as it did the strength and power of the former two races. The writing style is direct ad clean, whilst I noticed more editing errors than in previous volumes.

Chapter 1: Introduction
This gives an overview of the focus of the book - elven wizardry - and the benefits for an elf to take a level or three of Wizard as a mix with their main class focus.

Chapter 2: Feats And Skills
The chapter begins with some general feats, the majority of which tie in to the base feat of Favored Terrain - the ability to choose a terrain (alternatively, cold or warm climate) in which you gain a +1 morale bonus to skill checks and may exchange traditional elven weapon proficiencies for unusual environments. These feats tend to be most suited (on a roleplaying level) for rangers and druids, which was a pleasant surprise given the focus on magic. Other feats linked to Favored Terrain include Pulse Of The Wilds, which enables an elf to sense danger in his favored terrain based on the CR of a hostile creature, and Tree Stepper (allows the elf to move and even run through the tree-tops).

Arcane feats provide some choices specifically for arcane magic-users that include availability of healing spells (at +3 spell slot) and Elemental Penetration (reduces energy resistance by 1 point per caster level). An interesting set of arcane feats are Spell Wards, which allow a spell slot to be exchanged for wards against spells cast against you - counterspelling, turning or absorbing a specific spell.

There are various ideas for using Craft skills to create elven style weaponry and items, including living items that can naturally repair themselves. Knowledge (Arcana) is used for many of the new options presented in the book, and these are mentioned here.

Chapter 3: Lost Arcana
This section begins with a variant set of rules governing opposition schools for specialist wizards. Taking more opposition schools than necessary brings various options for purchasing via a points system.These include being able to cast a specialist spellsas Heightened, at +1 caster level, or even a spontaneous casting of a specialised spell.

The remainder of the chapter focuses on ley lines and power nexuses. Ley lines are the magical equivalent of power lines running across the land, though they're intangible and invisible. Power Nexuses are the magical equivalent of power stations and are located at places of magical power. Spellcasters (and sometimes others) can hook into ley lines and power nexuses to boost their spellcasting ability in various ways, and there is also advice on fighting other spellcasters for control of a nexus and actually creating nexuses.

Chapter 4: Prestige Classes
This chapter is the meat and drink of the book and contains the following 10-level prestige classes designed to be compatible with elves who take levels in a combination of the wizard class plus one of the other classes:
* Ley Runner (Wizard/Barbarian) - uses the power from ley lines, power nexuses and rage to become harder to hit through various movement and evasion abilities.
* Arcanologist (Wizard/Bard) - seeks to retrieve lost elven arcane lore and items, to keep it safe from others who might abuse its power; abilities surround locating elven magic and being able to avoid detection and traps.
* Grand Theurgist (Cleric/Wizard) - uses a mixture of arcane and divine magic for holy ends, including using turning attempts to boost arcane spellcasting.
* Wayshepherd (Druid/Wizard) - essentially guard and protect nexuses and ley lines, including the ability to empower animal companions with magic from a nexus.
* Veteran Wizard (Fighter/Wizard) - war-wizard type who can ignore arcane spell failure and can more easily prepare self-defensive spells.
* Seneschal Of The Great Library (Monk/Wizard) - defenders of elven magical libraries with abilities such as memorising scrolls and flurry casting (allowing a touch spell to be included in a flurry of blows).
* Exemplar (Paladin/Wizard) - essentially a paladin with arcane spellcasting ability, allowing the examplar to prepare arcane spells as divine spells, and access to arcane healing.
* Spell-shikar (Ranger/Wizard) - takes the ranger's tracking ability to the planar realms and extends the favored enemy ability to include arcane matters.
* Anarcanist (Rogue/Wizard) - assassin-type who specialises in dealing with arcane spellcasters who threaten elven society, be they elven or of another race, including the ability at high levels to drain spells.
* Outcast Specialist (Sorcerer/Wizard) - outcast from elven society for practicing sorcery, the outcast specialist takes an obsession with one particular school of magic into exile with him, allowing more spells in this area to be known.

Chapter 5: Elven Roleplaying
A short two-page chapter discussing elven long life, and four roleplaying archetypes - nature-lover, hedonist, scholar, and elitist. This chapter seems to concentrate more on elven philosophy than actual roleplaying tips - it doesn't actually delve much into the actual behavioural traits that might manifest based on these philosophies, and would have been more useful had it done so.

Appendix A: Spell Design
This appendix provides a relatively simple set of guidelines for quick spell design, in order to allow a player to design (and a GM to judge) a spell suited to a wizard PC's level. The system uses a number of school-based templates, takes into account the Wizard's Knowledge (Arcana) ranks, level, and available wealth and time. It then looks at a standard spell for the school and type of effect and scatters game mechanics either side of this baseline. The spell designer must compare his concept with the game mechanics (range, duration, SR, etc.) either side of the baseline to adjudicate the appropriate level of his spell. There is also some discussion on mixing rules from the templates to create more unusual spells. This system needs some playtesting before it is possible to fully judge its efficacy, but its a bold concept.

Conclusion:
Elves improves on previous Heroes of High Favor products by providing more for the same money.

Whilst 'Elves' provides some new and interesting game mechanics, not all of them are completely clarified in the text and this could lead to confusion and abuse. For example, in the section that discusses greater school specialisation, one of the benefits that can be gained is an extra spell slot (of any level) and the benefit can be gained multiple times. The text warns... "However, you may not prepare more spells of a higher level than of any lower level slot. For example, a 9th-level specialist with three bonus spell slots per day could prepare one bonus 5th level spell and two bonus 4th level spells, but could not prepare two bonus 5th level spells and only one bonus 4th level spell." This theoretically implies on the one hand that you could prepare one 5th- and two 4th-level spells without preparing any 3rd-level or lower spells whilst stating in the same paragraph that one cannot do this because you'd be preparing more 4th-level spells (2) than 3rd-level spells (0) - and anyway, why wouldn't I just prepare three 5th-level spells? This kind of nebulousness can be found at several points. That said, there are plenty of ideas that do seem to work fine and are clearly stated - I particularly enjoyed the favored terrain-based feats and the spell wards.

In previous HOHF books, I found at least a couple of the prestige classes to be excellent and really stimulate the imagination - I found the prestige classes in 'Elves' to be fairly utilitarian overall, and none seemed to really stand out above the others, some even seeming a little boring. However, elves are my favourite character race, and I don't want to judge too harshly.

Despite my criticisms, the book still delivers plenty of ideas for players running elven wizard multiclassed characters in particular, and much of the information seemed to be very useable outside the focus of the book, making it a more widely useable product for the GM as well as the player - the concept of power nexuses and ley lines in particular could become a great focus for an entire campaign or even campaign setting.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

*Note: There are two reviews by staff members of the d20 Magazine Rack for this product. Both are being included to illustrate the differences in style and opinion. Any comments about this review should be left at the d20 Magazine Rack under the original review location if you wish the reviewers to respond.

By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing up the Target
Heroes of High Favor: Elves is the third offering in Bad Axe Games’ Heroes of High Favor series that examines each race’s stereotypic archetype. Written by Benjamin Durbin, this 78 page, 6” by 9” softbound volume takes a mechanics-rich look at elves and their favored class: wizard. It retails for $9.95.

First Blood
Heroes of High Favor: Elves is unabashedly a player’s book. It even says that in the first sentence, with a wise caveat to get GM approval before use. That said, it is chock full of crunchy bits: feats, optional rules, and prestige classes. Bad Axe Games’ approach is to reinforce the archetype for each of the core races, and HOHF: Elves is no exception. The book’s material is designed for the stereotypical elf: woodsy, effete, aloof, good with a bow and sword, and deadly with arcane magic. The optional rules are for the use of arcane magic, and all of the prestige classes are built assuming a multi-classed wizard character.

HOHF: Elves introduces 26 new feats as well as new applications for Craft and Knowledge skills. The 12 general and 14 arcane feats primarily reinforce an elf character’s bond with nature and use of arcane magic. One or two are cause for concern: Moonrunner grants darkvision, for example, and Bow Mastery provides a +1 “to hit” with all bows that stacks with weapon focus – something to be avoided if you feel that archery feats are already slightly more advantageous than melee feats. On the whole, however, the feats balance well. Craft applications include fletching and armor-smithing, and among other things allow the creation of special arrows. These are good ideas, though I felt the costs were a bit low – 300gp and a DC 20 check to create armor with a 5% lower Arcane Spell Failure chance seems too good to pass up, for example.

The book also introduces three original sets of rules to deal with arcane magic – new specialist wizard rules, ley lines and nexuses, and spell design templates. The specialist wizard rules are the first I’ve seen that actually provide a sensible system for determining what prohibited schools a specialist wizard should choose. For the cost of a feat, the specialist wizard can choose additional prohibited schools to obtain a variety of additional abilities tied to their specialty school. These rules can add a great deal of flavor to wizard specialization.

Ley lines and power nexuses, too, can add quite a bit of arcane flavor to a higher magic campaign. By connecting to one of these sources, the wizard can enhance spellcasting effects – boosting effective caster levels or fueling metamagic effects, for example. The system is fairly well balanced, but retains some potential for abuse – GMs should carefully review this section to make sure it fits the flavor of their campaign.

The spell design templates, located in an appendix, are another clever mechanism for use in creating original spells. By referring to a spell baseline, a spell is created by adding features to the base spell, each feature increasing or decreasing the final spell level by a set amount. The system works quite well for most of the core spells I tried to match, with the exception of sleep – which calculated out to a 3rd level spell under this system. The system does have a breaking point, so it should be used as a guideline rather than as an a la carte menu – one can, for example, build a 3rd level spell that grants a permanent +2 ability score bonus.

The ten prestige classes form the meat of the book, one based on each multi-class combination with wizard. Some of these are quite clever – I particularly like the ranger-wizard Spell-shikar prestige class, most of whose abilities are based on favored enemy and favored terrain abilities, making that ranger class feature truly useful. Two of the classes depend on the use of the ley lines rules – the Ley-runner (wizard-barbarian) and the Wayshepard (wizard-druid), so these are useless without implementing the ley lines rules. Only one of the prestige classes seemed over-the-top from a balance perspective – the wizard-cleric Grand Theurgist, which grants +1 spellcasting level every level in addition to bonus feats, familiar abilities, turn undead bonuses, and special domain abilities. There is simple no reason for a wizard-cleric to NOT take this prestige class.

The book concludes with a short section on elven roleplay, with hints on fleshing out the elven archetype.

Critical Hits
Heroes of High Favor: Elves delivers exactly what its author intended: it’s a crunchy book filled with elven player-goodness. The feats, skills, and prestige classes fit the archetype well, and provide some interesting options. The different approaches to arcane magic are quite original, and could potentially add a great deal of arcane flavor to any campaign. If you have a lot of specialist wizards in your campaign, for example, the variant school specialization rules are probably worth the purchase price alone.

Critical Misses
There are some potentially unbalanced mechanics in the book, so any GM should consider carefully before adding the entire package to his campaign. Most of the new items balance out quite well – but the exceptions (like the Grand Theurgist and the spell design templates) should be used with caution. If you don’t buy into the elven stereotype, though, be advised that you won’t like this book.

Coup de Grace
Virtually the entire book is open content, the exception being the flavor text for each of the prestige classes. Rules are carefully followed, with the exception of a few potential – and admittedly subjective – balance issues. The new rules applications are more cleverly original than previous works in the series. Keep in mind, though, that this is a player-oriented work focusing on one race and essentially one class. If you’re and elf or wizard fan, though, this little gem is a great value for the money.

-----------------------------------------

By Brad Mix, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
This review is for Heroes of High Favor: Elves, the third installment in the Heroes of High Favor series. This is written by Benjamin Durbin, published by Badaxe Games and retails for $9.95. Cover and interior illustrations are by Andrew Hale. Its 78 pages long but that is a little misleading because the book is about 2/3 normal size. It is 6 by 9 inches. A standard notebook page of paper is 8 ½ by 11 inches. Even though it is small it packs a lot of information into those pages. Not all of it good though.

First Blood
The author states that the view of the elves presented in this book is different than what is previously offered by other fantasy and role-playing games. I did not find that to be the case at all. Most everything presented is exactly what I think of when I think of elves. Elves live in the forest. Elves love magic, Elves are aloof and don’t get involved with the affairs of other races. Even some of the feats and skills help to strengthen this stereotypical view. Under skills there are: Craft-Bow Making, Seeking-which adds sights to a bow and reduces the penalties of range by one half, Increased Range-self explanatory, and Elven War Arrow- which adds 1 to the threat rating for arrow criticals. Under Feats we have the obligatory Bow Mastery, Favored Terrain- the elf gets to pick the terrain, but is not limited to forest, Feather Step, Tree Stepper, and Will of the Wilds-which grants a bonus to protect his homeland. This is not to say that all the skills and feats are bad, just not as new and original as claimed.

Chapter 2 starts off with new skills and feats. A couple of bright spots here. Life Sculptor allows for the creation of masterwork structures from living material of the characters homeland. Elemental Penetration. This feat allows any energy (fire, cold, sonic etc.) type spell to lower the targets resistance by 1 point per level of the caster. Something any mage can surely use. It’s not until the Arcane feats that the true potential of this chapter is reached. Some of these seem overpowered though. Like Gifted Healer- This allows the wizard to cast healing spells from the clerics spell list. The down side is that it is cast at three levels higher. Thus a first level cleric healing spell would need to occupy a forth level wizard spell slot. Lure of the Lich-. I didn’t realize that Elves were into lichdom! But with the only prerequisite of being a 1st level caster, why not? This feat allows the Elf to age to the next category on the age chart and gain the benefits as well as the negatives. With the unnatural aging come the benefits of increased Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma, with a decrease in Strength, Dexterity and Constitution. This feat can be taken multiple times but has no further effect once the venerable age is reached. Some of the well-balanced ones include: Gifted Medium-allows another person to see what the caster sees when using a divination spell. Forbidden Love-allows the caster to chose another creature type to affect with spells that only affect humanoids. So now Hold person could include Fey as a legal target. The spell does memorize as 1 level higher.

Chapter 3 is Lost Arcana. Specialist wizards starts off this chapter. By taking the Greater School Specialization feat, the character can forgo choosing more powerful opposition schools than is required. A diagram is listed and each school is given a numerical value. The higher the number the more opposition or higher value schools that need to be chosen. Additional schools can be chosen to gain other benefits as well. Including gaining spells from the masters spellbook, Saving throw bonus, Heightened Spell feat for free, Extra spell slot, +1 caster level, Spontaneous Casting, Metamagic Mastery. These too seem a little too powerful for only having to give up a school or two. The chapter then goes into ley lines and power nexuses. See Critical Misses for more information about this.

Elven roleplaying is detailed a bit in chapter 5. It offers a few suggestions on how to play elves. Different templates ore offered. The Child of Nature seeks to advance their relationship with nature. The Epicure tends to go out of their way to find something new and exciting. The Scholar has an in-depth knowledge of previous history because he was alive when it happened. The Elitist believes that the other races should learn from the Elves greatness.

Critical Hits
Appendix A offers great advice on spell creation. It uses a good mix of templates, tables and when to use Knowledge Arcana versus Spellcraft. It is the final part of the book, spans 12 pages, and is too detailed to go into here. But suffice it to say that it is well balanced and would be useful to anyone who wants to start making new spells that are balanced.

The prestige classes offered in chapter 4 are all options available to the multiclass wizard. A multiclass Wizard-Barbarian is the first on the list. It gives details on what skills and feats to pick. Then when the time is right the character can become a Ley Runner. The prestige class builds on the previous skills of both classes and adds new abilities. Ley Runners are often used as messengers. The next interesting multiclass combination is the Wizard-Sorcerer. At first this seems like an unusual combination but the sheer number of spells that can be cast is staggering. This is further enhanced if the wizard chooses to specialize. Any party would be foolish not to pick up this character. This pure caster will be slinging spells long after a single class caster would be in the back of the party hiding. Once the character is high enough level then he may take the prestige class Outcast Specialist. Bonus spell is the only ability granted but adds to the sheer number of spells all ready known. 3 bonus feats are also granted at the appropriate level. Eight other prestige classes for other multiclass wizards are included.

Critical Misses
The very first words in paragraph one states that you will need to seek GM approval before using any of the options listed in the book. It might as well have said, “Trick your GM into letting you use this material before he or she figures out that some of it is over balanced.” Ley lines and power nexuses, as described in chapter 3, go a long way to overbalance the game and give a lot of undue power to mages. To its credit the book does warn of, “world changing implications for the GM.” These lines and nexuses allow the elven mage (book mentions that all casters are aware of ley lines but does not specify if other races can use them) to tap into these power sources to gain spell casting bonuses. A DC 20 check is made against the characters Knowledge Arcana skill to tap into a ley line. A failure only stuns the character for d4 rounds. Additional attempts can be made immediately after the character recovers. On a roll of “1” the character is still stunned the same d4 rounds but cannot try again for one day. Additionally the character cannot move from that spot or the connection is broken (but there is a way around that). You’ll have mages tapping into the ley lines as often as a frat boy taps into a keg of beer.

Here are some of the benefits for tapping in. Maintain Ley Line Anchor, an easy way around that not moving problem. Boost Caster Level- increases spell casting level by 1 for all level dependent effects. Although this does make the casting time 1 full round. If you are lucky enough to tap into a power nexus then this limitation is eliminated. A nexus is a focal point for all these ley lines. Usually a monument, alter, tree, or ring of stones. If you can tap into one of these, additional powers are granted. Fuel Metamagic-this allows a free action check to enhance any spell with any metamagic feat the character knows. Remote Casting- allows the spell caster to cast spells between nexuses as if he had line of sight. A spellcraft check is required though. Substitute Caster Level allows the caster to use the level of the nexus instead of his own level for spell effects that use caster level. Locate Power Nexus-allows the caster to locate other nexuses that he has previously tapped into. Shield Power Nexus- allows the caster to try to stop the Remote casting of another. Information on how to create a power nexus is provided. The simplest power nexus can be created for only 50XP but does require the character to be at least a 5th level caster. The most powerful nexus would require 20,000 XP. The only difference between the 2 nexuses is the range in which the abilities can be used. The more powerful the nexus the farther the range.

Coup de Grace
The book is presented very well and makes good use of the space provided. The black and white artwork helps fill in the white space. The author fails to deliver on some of the promises made. I didn’t feel that it lived up to the claim of “Elves is the definitive sourcebook for elven player characters of every kind.” The saving grace for this book is the spell creation appendix. This is really of use for any spellcaster who wants to delve into the research required to make a new spell. The book does a great job of disclosing what is open content. On the bottom of the page it either states open content or nothing. This is a great help for writers and others who make good use of the OGL. Some Elf specific spells would have been in order. This would have helped to create a more unique elven feel for the book.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Heroes of High Favor: Elves by Bad Axe Games

Heroes of High Favor: Elves is what I feel is the best book by Bad Axe Games to date. The book is small and one might not notice it on the store selves if not for a most majestic cover by Brad Kelly and Andrew Hale. The cover is amazing; I can not really do it justice in a description. But the picture to the right should do the job nicely. This is the third book in the Heroes of High Favor series. The first two covered Half Orcs and Dwarves. Each book is more geared towards the player characters then the dungeon masters, but both will find a lot of useful information to expand upon these races.

The book is seventy eight pages in length and comes in a $9.95 The book though is not full sized, but well worth the money. The cover art is amazing and the interior art is well done. The layout is easy to read and the format of the tables is fine.

It starts with a small introduction into the series and then gives a little information on elves. The book does not have long passages of info on the elves, but cleverly hides it in the prestige classes and other areas. Next the book covers feats and skills. It starts with some general feats and then has many arcane feats followed by a small section on skills. All the feats have a strong elven feel and none of them seem to have and power problems. Next the book covers new specialization rules for Wizards and ley line and nexus rules. I think these rules are the strongest part of the book and do a great job of expanding the Wizard class and adding the elven feel to it all.

The prestige classes are the bulk of the book. They cover pairing each core class of the Players Handbook with the Wizard class in a unique blend of abilities. Personally, I think the idea is brilliant. Each class is more then a prestige class, it also discusses the particular multi class combination. My favorite is the Spell Shikar, the Ranger Wizard combination. They hunt and destroy the ancient enemies of the elves and have a range of abilities to help them with that. They can track across the planes and greater abilities to be used against their favorite enemies.

The last section covers some good role playing advice on elves. Then it has something that seems to have been left out of other books: rules for creating spells. It just seems that by now one would think that rules for creating spells would have been published, but I’m more then happy to have them included in this book.

Over all this is a great resource for elves. Players and Dungeons Masters alike will find it very useful. It is filled with great ideas and it is tough to beat the cost.