Honor and Corruption

[Crothian]

By Joshua Raynack
with additional design by
Cameron Guill and Shawn Folk

This file contains a full color version and the FREE Quests: Game Enhancement featured as the demo. Fully bookmarked and hyperlinked.

Page Count: 32 pages

There are the honored, the corrupted, and the dead - Who will you be?

This supplement for the d20 fantasy game system allows you to implement deeds of honor and the subtle manipulations of corruption in your campaign. Inside you will find the following:

- A detailed honor and corruption system
– 50 honor rewards for those of an honorable nature
– Rules for corruption and their effects for those possessing a tainted heart
– Two new races: the Honorborn (humans born with paladin lineage) and the Tarnishborn (humans born with blackguard lineage)
– Two new subclasses: the Knight and the Scoundrel
– New feats and much more!.

It is easily adaptable to incorporate into an campaign setting.

A Little About the Demo

The demo consists of 9 pages extra material we couldn't find room for - so we are giving it away for free!

 

[Crothian]

Honor and Corruption is a new PDF by Alea Publishing group and continues with their theme of writing products that deal with Knights and Chivalry. This pair of PDFs deals mostly with an new honor system for knights and also for thieves as it deals with the corruption side of honor that such characters can dive into. The first PDF is thirty two pages and deals with these issues and the second eleven page PDF deals with quests. Both are book marked. They have a good amount of art and border done in colors so it looks nice but can be a pain to print out. The layout though is very consistent and they use the same style in all their books.

The book starts with the honor system. It has a good share of table that describe gaining and losing honor through certain actions and how some alignments are have more honor then others starting out. There are honor checks that work like the same basic d20 check of rolling a d20 and adding the honor modifier of the character. There is a nice system for gaining rewards based on honor. I think this is well done and I’d actually like to see it expanded to replace the wealth rules and the gaining of treasure in a traditional D&D game. It would be nice to just let all of that fall under the honor rules that way characters have a bit more freedom with adventures and will not feel cheated out if they don’t find all the treasure. The rules also allow for powers to be gained from a high honor and that can work well in a lower magical setting as well.

Unfortunately the corruption side of things is not nearly as well defined or explored. I understand the assumption of this product to be people will more readily use honorable characters. But it would have been nice to see equal treatment and would have allowed the book to me more useful to a wider variety of gamers.

The book goes on with a pair of races, and a pair of subclasses. The races seem like alternate humans but deal with honor. They are not bad but do not seem like they are needed. The subclasses are a class options that brings more power to the character but cost 10% or more of the characters experience. I like the idea as it slows down character progression while giving them a few more powers to play with. Though the ones in here seem better then other subclasses I have read by Alea Publishing Group.

The book then has some feats that build of the honor system. Some of them help gain more honor, others allow the characters to do more impressive things if they have a high or low honor. For instance Heroic Leap allows one to jump as if they always have a running start while known Cruelty allows one with the leadership feat to use the cruelty negative as a bonus.

The second and smaller PDF deals with quests for the honorable character. The quests are nice and knightly though they might also be called a bit cliché. There are quests like trhe Sword in the Stone and subduing the great white stag. Each quest completed gains the person additional honor and abilities. It can be a bonus to movement or even a very nice bit of damage reduction.

This is a nice set of PDFs for people wanting knightly honor in their d20 system. I think the system can easily be expanded on and with luck Alea Publishing Group will include some support for this system in other books. I would have liked to see more corruption options though. That is the main drawback I had with the book.