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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2010902" data-attributes="member: 1129">It's been a long time in coming but Heroes of High Favor Halflings is out. Like previous books, this one works with the idea of the favored class of the race. In this case, the stereotypical halfling rogue.  The book is broken up into five chapters with an appendix making it an 80 page book, equal to the Elves, the larger in the series.The short review is that if you enjoyed the previous books in the series, this book takes those ideas and moves forward. There are new feats, skill uses, prestige classes and role playing ideas for the race in question. The appendix is an adventure for a halfling rogue. It continues the tradition of strong material from the BadAxe house even with a new writer, Jeremy Baldridge.The first chapter is merely an introduction to the series and the book with definitions of what is open game content and what's not. With some of the legal mumbo jumbo out there for certain products, it's nice to see an easy method of identification, using the words, Open Game Content at the bottom of a page that's Open. Reminds me of the good old days.Chapter two gets into the feats and skills. There are three types of feats here, halfling, general, and fighter. I was a bit surprised that there were a few feats dealing with ranged weapons that I'd want to use for my own elf rogue who uses knives. The first of these would be the good old Deadeye where you get your Dexterity modifier for damage and the second would be Power Throw, where you sacrifice accuracy for more damage and the third would be Throwing Mastery where you get a bonus to attack and damage with thrown or slung weapons. Of more interest to those seeking to maximize their Bluff skills, are the various special maneuvers you can now perform with it. These tricks require some other skills like Perform (dance) or Escape Artists and range from “A Friendly Kick in the Junk” where you add a little extra damage to your sneak attack from that oh so sensitive attack to Angry Penguin where you entrap your opponent in his own equipment. Nicely done material that'll see some use in the braver halflings and bluff masters.Another useful section is Craft (Lashworking). We get a lot of ideas about different ropes and other goods that can be made with such skills. How about Huts, Palisades and Rafts? Carts and Baskets? All simple stuff right? But it gets better because we have different materialls like Dragonamne, a fire resistant rope or Carbon Cord, an acid resistant rope. It includes the DC to make as well as the market value making the materials easy to add or simply buy from a store.Those more interested in the traps a rogue can make might now like the examples here but I find they fit the halfling quite nicely. These range from Clumsy Barfly where broken bottles and other class is set on the floor creating caltrops to One Eyed Farmer where you use a rake or other similar tool with a dagger tied to it so that when the user steps on one end, wham! Dagger in the eye. I couldn't help but think of good old Sideshow Bob and the spoof of Cape Fear they did where he kept stepping on these rakes and getting bashed in the face.Now what if you want some more information or uses for Sleight of Hand? We've got different knacks or specialties for you then. For each four ranks you have, you get one knack. These range from Baby Face, where you can retry a failed skill attempt with only a +5 DC penalty to Mugger, where you get a +2 bonus to pick the pockets of prone targets. It's a nice section and like the various Martial Arts we've seen in Dragon and other sources, the abilities aren't outrageous or overpowering.The Halfling Graffiti on the other hand, I'm not too sure about. These require a quick Decipher Script check to make and activate and provide little bonuses at a minor XP cost. The fact that you don't have to have a feat or anything to make them is a little too empowering so I'd probably make a “Tag” feat or something to allow a Halfling to use the Graffiti. These range from Good Hiding Spot, where you get a +4 luck bonus to hide, to Good Cover, where you get a +1 luck bonus to AC.Continuing with the innovation, we get Dirty Fighting. Here, the rogue can set aside damage dice, and roll them up, total them, and compare them to a DC check associated with different attacks. For example, Crippling Strike is a DC 10 so if a rogue wants to use it, they're going to have to use a minimum of two dice and roll, check their total against the DC. If they make it, the enemy then gets a Fortitude save against the total of your sneak attack check. If they fail, their movement is halved. Not bad but a little on the weak side as you need a minimum of two dice, meaning you're at least a third level rogue and at worst, you're enemy will have to make a DC of 12. If that's a third level fighter or ranger, he'll need a 9 on average. The tricks do allow a lot of customized use though and don't add greatly to combat although it does add a new level of options.The part of the book many will want to know about, is the Prestige Classes. These focus on the favored class of the character and combine it with every other class in the PHB. The PrCs are listed as you'd find the core classes in the PHB so it starts with the Razorback, the barbarian rogue, and ends with the Tramp Wizard. Now back in the day, when I was reading some books by the guy who did Dragondoom and other Tolkien inspired work, I remembered the Thorn Walkers, a group of 'Warrows' (i.e. Halflings) that protected their lands and thought they'd be fighter-thieves or fighter-rangers or some type and was looking for something like that here.While I didn't see that, I did see a lot of cool PrCs that add a lot of needed depth to the halflings. Take the Blood Grifter, a fighter-rogue who takes his dirty fighting to a new level. These individuals gain special tricks like Glintflash, where they blind their opponent and bonuses to their Dirty Fighting Checks. A bit odd, the Dissonant is a bard-rogue who uses dissonance in his playing to increase spells that inflict sonic damage or create such bad sounding music, that those about him can be shaken for the duration of the performance. Each PrC is first broken down by the class combination. So the Mercurial, the monk-rogue, is detailed with what they're like, how they fit into halfling society, and how to mimic the class with a monk-rogue combination. It'd be nice to see a level by level progression with BAB, ST, and special abilities written out but that'd take too much room and would only be a suggested progression as players are fickle in what they want. It then provides a 10 level PrC with special abilities and progression table.Like previous books, the role playing section isn't deep nor detailed, being two pages long. It's a listing of halfling proverbs with what they mean, often with two meanings, a hidden one and an obvious one. Remember little adventurers, “Risk is just a four-letter word for Opportunity.” For those who've never played a halfling before, this is good material for reference.The introductory adventure allows a halfling rogue to get some friends and enemies as they progress through some basic testing to see if they're rogue enough to learn about the thieves guild. This acts as a good spotlight for players, especially new ones, to see how their skills work and to see how DC's can be set for different options. It's not combat intensive and provides some story award experience points, giving GMs some ideas on how such options can be handled when dealing with fewer players.The book ends with two pages of advertisements, one for the whole Heroes series, and another for the limited printing of Grim Tales. The OGL at the end of the book wraps things up. The book added pages without increasing cost which is a good thing. It continues to use the same artists from previous books, so if you like Andrew Hale's art, you're in for a treat. Editing is fair, writing flows along well.Not quite the massive sourcebook that another company might put out, this book packs the crunch in quite nicely and allows not only halflings, but rogues to gain some new abilities. I enjoyed the mix of optional abilities, feats and PrCs and look forward to seeing the compilation.</blockquote>

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