Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drinnik Shoehorn" data-source="post: 2010992" data-attributes="member: 16072">Heroes of Light is an accessory for the Ravenloft Campaign Setting. It's 126 pages long and deals with the facets of heroism in the Demiplane of Dread. It is the companion book to Champions of Darkness. Fortunately it does not have as many failings as that book.The introduction talks about the different stages of virtue. It is very brief and not very informative. It starts introducing rules that are mentioned no where else in Ravenloft literature. This starts on page nine when in passing it mentions "Penitent characters have a -1 penalty on their Fear and Horror Checks." To me, this is a major rule and should be made more clear and should have been mentioned in the core rules.Chapter I details new Prestige classes, feats and the poorly written Morality rules. It has 12 new PrCs and 20 new feats. The PrCs vary in quality. Some are well written, like the True Innocent and the White Arcanist, whilst some aren't, such as the Blessed Paladin and the Blessed Defender. For some reason the authors decided to use the "Heavy Metal" quality for any Anchorite PrC. It basically means that the Anchorite must wear heavy metal armour or none at all. Most of the PrCs are unbalanced. They either demand too much from the PC taking the PrCs or give too much for too little. The clunky and unwieldy Morality rules make the PrCs difficult to use realistically. The nature of Ravenloft makes the Morality rules impossible to comply with. The powers checks detailed in the RLCS mean the character will fall from grace quickly and mean that the PC will not be able to continue the PrC.The feats as well are unbalanced. One, called Test of Virtue which does not give the PC any benefit until they have gained a level, then it becomes the Blessed feat. The Blessed feat is a prerequisite of 8 of the feats in this book. Half of the feats in this book rely on the PC taking the Test of Virtue feat.Chapter II deals with new Secret Societies in Ravenloft. Revealed here are four secret societies: The Blessed Army of Ezra, The Noble Brotherhood of Assassins, the Van Richten Society and the Vilushka. Of these the Van Richten Society is probably the one that will appeal to most DMs. It's a network of intellectuals and monster hunters across the Core domains. There's no formal leader and the name is merely a recognition that Van Richten brought these people together.The Brotherhood of Noble Assassins needs to be addressed simply because it shows that the author fails to grasp the fundementals of Ravenloft. Whilst false history of lands is a given in the setting, saying that the society was founded over 200 years ago and is the nemisis of a man who is only 55 years old shows a lack of knowledge of the campaign setting.Chapter III is rather cutely titled "Who's Blessed?" a joke on the usual "Who's Doomed?" titles of other Ravenloft NPC chapters. There are 11 NPCs, three of which are grouped together in a group called "The Wanderers." The most annoying thing about this chapter is the fact that none of the NPCs use ANY of the PrCs or feats introduced in Chapter I! The NPCs are the strongest factor of this book. Ravenloft has always been a world where the characters are important and none of the characters here lack like the ones in Champions of Darkness.Of the NPCs the strongest character-wise is Shih Suren, a Caliban Paladin (Calibans are Ravenloft's equivelent of Half-Orcs. Orcs do not exist in Ravenloft). He looks like a man with a tiger's head due to a curse on his father. He wants to be accepted by people and fears necromancy. He hails from the land of Rokushima Taiyoo, a land based on feudal Japan. The Wanderers are the reminants of a gypsy caravan decimated in the novel Spectre of the Black Rose. They are three Vistani men and one Stone Giant.Chapter IV deals with establishing a Heroic campaign. It deals with themes such as romance, tragedy, heroism and triumph.GOOD POINTS: Heroes of Light's strongest asset is it's NPCs they are all interesting. They can be easily inserted into any campaign and are even useful outside of the Land of Dread. The secret societies are also strong. The Brotherhood needs slight tweaking, but they are all useful.BAD POINTS: The PrC and the feats are unbalanced. They also are unwieldy due to the Morality system. This hurts the book in a major way.THE RESULT: Heroes of Light is a good book. It is not a great book. It lacks in places and the PrCs bring the book down. The over reliance on the Blessed feat also hurts the book.</blockquote>

Verification