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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krug" data-source="post: 2009895" data-attributes="member: 2141">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.</blockquote>

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