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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2009904" data-attributes="member: 1129">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.</blockquote>

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