D&D 3.x [Let's Read] The Frank & K Tomes

[Cergorach]

Not to be a "well, ackshually" guy, but I'd argue that Loren Coleman was the creator of such drama. If he didn't embezzle company funds and paid freelancers the work they were owed, none of the ensuing fallout would've happened.

That was never proven or admitted, they mixed company and private funds, something that happens often with small companies. And don't get me wrong, CGL has had 'issues' paying their freelancers since that drama as well. CGL isn't a good company to work for imho. But so are so many other small RPG companies and those had never the amount of drama that Trollman created. I'm not saying that there was no fire, but we have a saying: "Making from a mouse and elephant..." This drama primarily happened on the Shadowrun side of the business and the Battletech side was largely unaffected by the drama, even though they were also employing a ton of freelancers...

 

[Libertad]

Chapter 8: Money and Equipment​

Image taken from the Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants and Magic

Besides being heavily into dark magic stuff, another pet focus of the Tomes series was highlighting the stress points of D&D’s fantasy economic systems. Although discussed in other chapters as well, this is the first one that really touches upon this topic in-depth.

We first start off with an overview of equipment as it stands in 3.5, specifically Weapons. The authors note that they’re more or less fine with the diverse assortment of weapons in 3.X and don’t see the need to rebalance them, but they do have an issue with 3.5 introducing the concept of variant sizes for weapons. For example, a flail designed by halflings and other Small creatures is going to weigh less and do less damage than one designed by humans or ogres. The Tomes pretty much move back to 3.0’s simplification, and also adds in some restrictions to prevent Hulking Hurler cheese, such as not being able to use weapons that are larger than the character or that are too heavy to lift as a light load.

The section then moves onto bows. In the original 3.X rules, bows had composite versions which basically let you add a certain amount of Strength to damage rolls, with higher effective Strength being more expensive to craft and purchase. The authors describe this as “dumb,” saying that this made such weapons very cost-prohibitive to use effectively for orcs, giants, and the like. The alternative fix is that composite bows could still be made with a certain Strength requirement, but their cost would remain the same. The limiting factor is that bow-making civilizations only really make what is practical for the realistic Strength ranges of their people. Bows also have alternate ranges based on the intended size of its wielders.

Thoughts: First off, I disagree with the initial statement that 3.X weapons are more or less balanced with each other. Besides the existence of the Spiked Chain, there were definitely weapons that saw more use at tables due to practicality. Crossbows were notoriously weak in comparison to bows, while rapiers and scimitars were the preferred choice for crit-fishing builds given their high threat range. The return to simplification is a common complaint, and one that future Editions moved back to, treating weapons wielded by larger-than-Medium races as effectively unique equipment (albeit with its own can of worms). The Tomes have a step in the right direction, but it feels that it’s more of a patch than a fix, and ironically the “can’t wield weapons past a certain size/weight” does punish martials who already have things hard enough in this ruleset.

We continue to see some obfuscated meta-discussion by the authors. While they do go into detail about what they don’t like about weapon sizes, they don’t really talk about why strong bows being more expensive is dumb in and of itself when other gear made for large/strong races also gets price hikes. The 3.X rules already make armor for larger creatures more expensive, something that the Tomes don’t really change or address. One could logically assume that a bow made for a frost giant would require stronger materials in order to support the increased draw strength, so why is one form of expense an ill-designed decision, and the other not? Additionally, the reduced range on bows for smaller creatures is also a punishment. The increased bow range and removal of expense for higher Strength scores not only reinforces players to not pick halflings, goblins, and other small-sized races for archer builds, it encourages them to pick options such as Goliaths and Half-Ogres instead.

There’s some talk about making magical ammunition cheaper and more easily recoverable, along with new weapon materials for necromantic weapons. For the latter, we did talk about Boneblades in the Prestige Classes section, but we also get Blood Steel (+2 damage on a hit) and Black Steel (adamantine that has Ghost Touch and Wounding properties at no additional cost, but cause Wisdom drain when wielded). I don’t have strong opinions on these overall.

We move onto Armor, which has a much more significant rules overhaul. The authors note that most armor types are passed over in favor of just a few, so they created a set of new rules to make armor of all types more broadly appealing. We first start out with advice on not mixing and matching incompatible-sounding armor types and qualities, such as not applying Mithril to plate armor. Ironically, the Tomes’ take on Armor Non-Proficiency adds in some punishments not in the original 3.X rules, such as reduced movement in non-proficient armor if its armor check penalty exceeds the wearer’s Base Attack Bonus by a certain amount, and that armor of more unique and exotic origins (such as extraplanar types) require training in it for a day in order to gain proficiency. But there is one boon the Tomes grant to dextrous armor-wearers: they increase the Maximum Dexterity Bonus of armor for every two BAB higher than the Armor Check Penalty.

We then get an expanded set of tables for new and existing armor types in the Tomes. In addition to straightforward protection, armor and shields also grant bonus benefits based on Base Attack Bonus and ranks in particular skills in line with the principles of Scaling Feats. This wasn’t just a Frank and K endeavor, for they were assisted by Mister Sinister in rounding out the scaling armors. For example, Dragonscale Suits grant stuff like Energy Resistance and eventually Immunity based on the type of dragon its armor is made from, Hide Armor can make the wearer undetectable by scent and harder to track, and Spiderweb Clothing lets one be more spider-like such as unrestrained movement through webs as as well as gaining poison immunity.

Thoughts: There’s an awful lot of armor types, and the scaling benefits help make them stand out. However, these rules suffer from the option paralysis effect that the Scaling Feats do, and there are still certain armors that have more broadly applicable benefits than others. For example, Padded Armor still sucks, with the 8 rank benefit (gain benefit of 8 hours of sleep with 7 hours) actually being weaker than the 4 rank benefit (can reroll a failed Tumble check under certain circumstances), while the Adamantine Breastplate’s +1 BAB has a better benefit (Damage Reduction equal to BAB vs non-adamantine weapons) than most of the Ringmail armor’s (its +1 BAB merely negates 5 points of non-lethal damage from any attack).

The Economicon is the final section of this chapter, moving on from raw crunch to the discussion of more ephemeral concepts that are split into 8 different subject matters. This is also the first time that the Tomes talk about the Wish Economy in more depth. Although the PDF goes into proper detail in the Book of Gears in back, I believe that giving the readers a brief run-down here can help provide a better understanding.

The Tomes operate with the expectation that D&D societies are separated into three broad economic systems:

1. The Turnip Economy, representing subsistence agriculture and hunter-gatherers, societies that rely on barter systems, and others that have not developed or are sufficiently removed from more intricate systems such as banking and minted coinage.
2. The Gold Economy, representing the pseudo-medieval adventuring standard, with Material Plane cities and major population centers being the nexus points of trade.
3. The Wish Economy, representing archmages, extraplanar bastions, the courts of archfiends and divinities, and other people and places operating by immortal principles.

The Wish Economy is further outlined by several core rules: the first is that coins in D&D are 1/50th of a pound; that an Efreet can produce a Wish for any magical item of 15,000 gold or less; that a Balor can cast Greater Teleport at will, but only carry 30 pounds of currency while doing so, and that even with platinum pieces that’s only 15,000 gold worth of currency.* Thus, any magic item worth more than 15k is only bought for more valuable things, such as immortal souls and other planar currency. And as the Tomes are built around the expectation that captured Efreeti are easily accessible, that PCs of powerful enough status can be assumed to more or less acquire magic items worth 15k or less without any effort.

*This is actually wrong: a Balor can Greater Teleport with 50 pounds of objects at most, not 30.

The Economicon bounces between different subject matter, such as an attempted in-universe justification for the universal price tag increase for masterwork weapons and armor by saying that D&D functions on a war-time economy. As to why, this doesn’t make sense to the authors that a masterwork dagger is worth more than their weight in gold. Or that silver/gold/etc pieces are unreasonably heavy in comparison to real-world coins. But there are some choice essays I want to focus.

8.3.4 Bad Money Drives Out Good: The Penalties of Paper

This essay attempts to explain why fiat currency and paper money don’t really exist in D&D. It basically boils down to the claim that such currency only came about with the rise of Nationalism in the real world, and that D&D societies are still operating in the Iron Age. The authors point out that D&D settings can have expansive empires and kingdoms, but “that’s it as far as civilization goes.” Since they aren’t countries in the modern sense of the word, people can’t place trust in a higher governmental authority beyond what can be enforced through labor and force of arms.

This is wrong from an historian’s perspective: first off, the real-world Iron Age predated the feudal era by several centuries to a millennia, depending on where you are in the world. Additionally, many pre-Industrial societies have made use of paper currency. The Mongol Empire, the Tang and Song Dynasties of China, even the Knights Templar all had paper currency. And if we really want to be in the Iron Age, Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi and the city-state of Carthage also made use of paper for the tracking of debts.

8.3.5 Powerful Creatures Have a Powerful Economy

This focuses on what forms of currency that archmages, demon lords, and the like use in place of vulgar metal. The Tomes provide five major types: gems, souls, concentration, hope, and raw chaos. Gems are useful because they are used as material components for all manner of spells, souls are useful for necromantic stuff and for the lower planes’ slave trade, concentration represents ideas so powerful that they take the form of an amber-like substance and are valued by Lawful outsiders, hope is a shining weightless material valued by celestials, and raw chaos is the essence of possibility that can take innumerable forms. All of these materials can be used in the crafting of magic items.

Our final essay in this chapter brings things to a close. As we covered in prior posts, D&D 3.5 and the Tomes grant characters (not just PCs) powers and abilities that can fundamentally change things on both a personal and societal scale. And that’s before getting into high-level Wish-granting shenanigans! The Tome authors are more than aware that many gaming groups have asked the question of why the PCs and powers-that-be haven’t used their influence to reshape D&D settings into something much more advanced. This is pretty much a fantasy equivalent of the “Why Doesn’t Reed Richards Cure Cancer?” type of questions you see bandied about in superhero fandoms. This next subject is what the Tomes attempts to answer.

8.3.8 Bringing the World out of the Dark Ages

It is historical fact that you can take a ridiculous and crumbling imperium with serfs and horse-drawn carts managed by a tyrannical and squabbling aristocracy and boot strap it into being a technologically sophisticated global power that can win the space race and such in a single generation even while being invaded by an evil and genocidal empire. The people at the top don't even need to be nice or sane, they just have to understand that economics is an entirely voodoo science, and the limits of production can be broken by thousands of percentage points by getting everyone to buy on credit, work on projects that people looking at the big picture tell them to work on, continuously invest in productive capital, and believe in the future.

Right. That's called Communism, and it ends the dark ages immediately even if it isn't run well. Presumably if it was being run by Paladins who actually radiate goodness and Wizards who are inhumanly intelligent and can cast powerful divinations to determine projected needs and goods could be distributed to the masses with teleportals - it would work substantially better. That sort of thing is not outside the capabilities of your characters in D&D. It's not outside the capabilities of the people in the village your characters are saving from gnollish invasion. It's not even technically complicated. But it isn't done.

Partly it isn't done because we're playing Dungeons & Dragons, not Logistics & Dragons. While it is true that you can fix the world's ills in a much more tangible fashion by industrializing the production of grain and arranging a non-gold based distribution system such that staple food stuffs are available to all, thereby freeing up potential productive labor for use in blah blah blah… the fact is that to a very real degree we play this game because telling stories about slaying evil necromancers and swinging on chandeliers is awesome. But the other reason is that the society in D&D really isn't ready for a modern or futuristic social setup. No one is going to understand how they are supposed to interact with Socialism, Capitalism, or Fascism, things are Feudal and people understand that. Wealth is exchanged for goods and services on the grounds that people on both sides of the exchange aren't sure that they would win the resulting combat if they tried to take the goods or wealth by force of arms.

Rome had steam engines. Actual difference engines that propelled a metal device with the power of a combustion reaction through the medium of the expansion of heated water. Really. They never built rail roads because slaves were cheaper than donkeys and the concept of investing in labor saving devices was preposterous. In D&D, the idea of having an economy based around trust in the government and labor/wealth equivalencies is similarly preposterous.
It's not that the idea wouldn't work, it's that every man, woman, and child in society would simply laugh you out of the room if you tried to explain it to them.

Thoughts: A long-ass time ago, when I first got interested in the Tomes, the “economics is voodoo science” was the major thing I tripped over. It’s pretty uncontroversial in academia that economics is a legitimate social science. Heck, it’s one of the few things that libertarians and communists agree on! I first thought (and saw the defense of) the bolded line that it’s being discussed in the context of Soviet-style centralized planning. But it’s not, for the term "entirely" applies to an objective stance of authority. It’s also not talking about “Voodoo Economics,” which was a criticism of Ronald Reagan’s policies, as it’s quite clearly about the Soviet Union which was hardly a laissez-faire capitalist society.

This is perhaps the prime example of obfuscated authorial intent: the writers not only drop a contentious declaration that is hardly a popular opinion, they don’t really explain why they came to that conclusion and presume that the reader will accept it at face value. What makes this line worse than other examples is that the Tome authors go into a lot of detail about fantasy economics. For a STEM example, this would be the equivalent of reading a D&D sourcebook talking about fantastical poisons and diseases, and then out of nowhere the author says that vaccines cause autism in real life. This served as my first shelf-breaking moment in not just the Tomes, but the future works of Frank and K. Even if what they were talking about appeared to make sense, I always had that lingering seed of doubt that what I was reading could in fact be incredibly wrong.

But more broadly, this essay is a good example of the Selective Realism I talked about in the original post. This isn’t the first time that the Tomes take an implied “feudal people are too dumb and unenlightened to take advantage of magic and other society-shaping tools,” but it does showcase the authors’ attempts at explaining why there’s a dissonance between the rules presented and the world as it is presented. I am reminded of how Ars Magica had sourcebooks talking about how the magical powers and creatures presented in its rules could change medieval Europe, which is quite solidly feudal. Instead of retreating from the world-breaking expectations that could arise out of handing great power to the PCs and NPCs of the setting, it reinforces the feeling of a living world full of people making decisions that feel plausible to the reader. The Tomes’ take is antithetical to this.

Thoughts So Far: There are some things I like in this chapter, some things I dislike. The latter outweighs the former, for where the Tomes falter, they falter hard.

Join us next time as we get our war face on in Chapters 9 through 11: Combat Basics, Advanced Combat, and Conditions & Special Abilities!

 

[Libertad]

Chapter 9: Combat Basics​

Image is the Duel by Shen Fei

This post is going to be a three-parter on account that these chapters cover a lot of material that exists in the core rules. Most of Chapter 9 covers basic concepts such as how to calculate one’s attack bonus, initiative and surprise, and the different action types. They do include descriptions for Swift and Immediate actions which is appreciated. Such action types did not originate in the 3.5 core rules, but were repeated enough in future material to the point that they became virtually core.

What is new in this chapter are the three essays at the beginning. The first outlines how in older Editions of D&D, certain classes were intentionally unbalanced due to having harder prerequisites: for instance, the paladin was harder to qualify for due to having strict ability score minimums at a time when such scores were all rolled. The Tome authors argue that the acceptance of the Fighter as a “weak” class has carried over into 3rd Edition, and thus the Tomes are designed so that the Fighter and other classes are intended to be important characters in their own right rather than meat-shield speedbumps for the monsters.

The next essay talks about how the set-up of fantasy elements fundamentally changes the face of warfare. In short, heroes and adventuring parties are akin to special forces who are sent to take care of problems that you can’t just throw hordes of peasant militias (or goblins, or dretches, etc) in order to solve. Non-magical aristocrats who don’t have Cú Chulainn levels of super-strength still have a place in the world, as the day-to-day management of a realm includes stuff that adventurer skills aren’t necessarily specialized for doing. However, it is an open secret in the halls of power that adventurers are the real power in the lands, but it’s an easier pill to swallow for the populace to have apparent leaders who come from stable-looking dynasties rather than nomadic bands of murderhobos.

The final essay concerns the concept of honor, specifically as a social construct rather than a cosmic law. What do such codes look like in a world where magic isn’t assumed to be a tool of the Devil, or where certain fantasy races have innate powers that give them particular advantages such as seeing in the dark? The Tomes explain that honor codes primarily work to keep the powerful in power and the rest of the “little people” in their place. Several examples are given of what this looks like: for example, getting a lot of help on a single project is dishonorable, as powerful mages have great power at their fingertips, but most Commoners can only do so much by themselves. Or destroying magic items, even corrupted and innately dangerous ones, is dishonorable. As to why, you’re removing a source of power from the world that other people can use.

The authors note that whether or not someone is honorable doesn’t necessarily map to alignment, and in the end boils down to whether or not society at large is willing to ostracize the person. Meaning that even Chaotic Evil societies have their own twisted forms of honor.

Thoughts: I like all of these essays, as they give food for thought when it comes to world-building and how fantasy elements can apply to otherwise feudal medieval worlds. The Fighter essay is rather interesting, in that 3rd Edition’s Fighter actually lost a bunch of things that the class could do in earlier Editions, such as a surfeit of bonus attacks against 1 Hit Die mooks or overall having the best saving throws. The essay doesn’t point such things out specifically, but it is related to the overall perception of certain classes being more…prestigious, if you will, among players.

Chapter 10: Advanced Combat​

Image is Duel by Antonio J. Manzanedo.

This continues the process of copying stuff from the core rules, although the subjects covered are more situational such as difficult terrain, cover and concealment, and modifiers to attack and Armor Class based on various factors. This chapter does feature several major changes: the first is that the Expertise and Power Attack feats are now made into universal options that anyone with at least +1 Base Attack Bonus can perform. Power Attack is made so that the damage bonus is a fixed rate of +2 for every 1 BAB sacrificed, so two-handed weapons no longer have an inherent advantage and you can Power Attack with light weapons now.

The second major change is a mechanic known as the Edge. It is a pseudo-condition where a character “has the Edge” against an opponent if they have a greater Base Attack Bonus than said opponent. Various feats and class features can grant the Edge in other ways, too. For example, the Swashbuckler gains the Edge against an opponent until that opponent strikes them. The Edge grants new and improved uses of existing combat maneuvers: for example, a disarm attempt against a target you have the Edge against doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity, and can choose where the disarmed object lands or even grab it with a free hand. It’s particularly good for grapplers, as having the Edge makes it so that the target cannot attack you at all once you successfully perform and maintain a maneuver against them. In fact, this section significantly streamlines the infamous grapple rules by dividing them into 3 distinct maneuvers: Grab On (attach yourself to an opponent), Hold Down (basically pinning them in place), and Lift (can move around freely while carrying the opponent).

The third major change is actually near the end in its own essay, concerning the new and improved [Leadership] feats and their shared system. Basically, it’s an optional element, and a character gains a Leadership score once they have a Leadership feat. They can take more than one, but the Tomes say that it’s a common house rule to limit people to one such feat. Leadership in base 3.5 derives from character level and Charisma plus several situational modifiers. In the Tomes, it is based on the feat: for example: Army of Demons is based on ranks in Knowledge (the Planes) plus Charisma modifier, while Lord of Death is one’s ranks in Knowledge (Religion) plus Wisdom modifier. In the base game, one’s Leadership score determines the level of Cohorts and Followers (the latter of whom were limited to 6th level at best), but Tomes swaps this out by measuring such NPCs by Challenge Rating. In fact, the maximum Challenge Rating of one’s Followers now is 10, although the book states that Followers are “traditionally of the crappy classes” such as Expert and Warrior, and Cohorts are always 2 CR lower than the PC. Certain [Leadership] feats grant one the ability to recruit monsters as Followers: Lord of Death and Army of Demons are pretty obvious, although the latter feat isn’t specific to demons but rather the Outsider type in general, and said feat also has the [Celestial] as well as [Fiend] tag. Monster Rancher is the most broad feat for follower species, for the “your followers can and must be monsters” doesn’t limit by creature type like the other ones do.

The final set of explicit rules in this chapter is the Mass Combat Mini-game, an abstracted version of large-scale warfare for D&D. The Tomes note that this isn’t meant to be a complicated or stand-alone system, noting that if you “wanted to play Warhammer 40K, then you wouldn’t be playing D&D.” In short, this mini-game takes place on a map, with two or more opposing forces known as Armies. Armies are composed of Units with values for Hit Points, Damage, Move, and Morale, which are pretty straight-forward. Morale is like a secondary set of Hit Points that apply to your Army Morale Rating as a whole, and the value decreases the more Units you lose. Once that Rating hits 0, surviving Units on that side flee combat. Each Unit has a Commander, who has a Commander Rating that is added to the total Morale Rating and determines how many Tactics they can give each turn. Tactics are special actions a Commander can order for a Unit to undertake, such as fortifying the square they’re in to gain Damage Reduction. PCs can take control of Units as Leaders if they have a Commander Rating, which is obtained by having a [Leadership] feat.

This chapter ends with a series of essays talking about what war and its consequences look like in a generic D&D setting. The first set is called A World at War, which first starts out with individual entries for popular fantasy races and monstrous civilizations. For example, it talks about how gnomes’ propensity for illusion magic and ability to speak with burrowing animals makes them excellent guerilla fighters, or that the sahuagin rule the largest empires by physical size given that oceans cover the majority of most Material Plane worlds. The essays also talk about how non-human lifespans can shape perspectives, such as how dwarves are very good at multi-generational prolonged conflicts when fighting orcs, goblins, and giants. The dwarves see and judge such conflicts as part of a larger “eternal war” and thus take very long-term perspectives, while their enemies see the war as a series of separate conflicts with their own individual goals and stakes, and also don’t have as long-held a tradition of record-keeping so they take longer to learn from their mistakes. After the War is a more specialized set of essays talking about what happens when certain races (and necromancers) win in warfare, along with sample adventure hooks. One such example is a “resource rush” in a region, when a necromancer’s army kills everyone living but leaves all the inorganic resources behind for the taking.

Logistics and Dragons is our final set of essays, and is also where the changes to Leadership are which I already covered earlier. It more or less discusses population demographics, but starts out with discussing handling of magic items at higher levels. The latter example says that by the time PCs start interacting with the Wish economy, the DM should be more lax in handwaving keeping track of minor magic items. The authors note that different groups have different expectations on book-keeping and to first talk things out to ensure that everyone’s on the same page.

The discussion on demographics further builds upon the “let’s give everyone classes and levels” of 3rd Edition: notably, it says that most high-level NPCs are spellcasters, because “NPCs go up in levels in situations appropriate to their class, unlike Player Characters” and that “NPC Fighters rarely survive in the environment required to become 20th level, while NPC Wizards often do.” Also, the Tomes get rid of the concept of the Commoner class, instead replacing it with Humanoid Hit Die to represent non-combatant laborers, and that “normal people” NPC classes only go up to 5th level.

Thoughts: The essays on how various fantasy races and monsters go to war are my favorite in this chapter. I also like the concept of the Edge, in that it gives martial classes a much-needed push. While it’s still rather cumbersome in requiring multiple die rolls, the Tomes’ take on grappling reads easier than what exists in 3rd Edition’s default. The Mass-Combat Minigame is incomplete in that it doesn’t have any sample Units, and it’s already heavily competing with a lot of other minigames and stand-alones out there. I do find it amusing how despite how far the Tomes went to bring martials and non-primary casters up, that the fantasy world it portrays is still dominated by high-level mages. And while it’s optional, I am not as fond of the Leadership changes, as it’s empowering an already-powerful feat and set of rules; they don’t need the help. I understand that it would be cool to have an army of monsters at your beck and call, but it just doesn’t work with how the action economy is in play.

Chapter 11: Conditions & Special Abilities​

This chapter pretty much covers the relevant entries from the core rules. As far as I can tell, they’re the same as base 3.5, so I’m not going to cover this one.

Thoughts So Far: These chapters contain my favorite bits of “fluff” from the Tomes, and the “crunch” isn’t too bad either. The Edge, the universal unlocking of Expertise and Power Attack, and the treatises on warfare provide martial-friendly content, which is nice when two of the Tomes are very mage-friendly by comparison.

Join us next time as we cover Chapter 12: Magic!

 

[Libertad]

Chapter 12: Magic​

Image is Wizard's Duel by Phill-Art

A relatively short chapter, Magic is composed of both new rules and general essays on the state of affairs in D&D 3.5 as they stand.

The essays vary in subject, with some of them not even being about magic at all. The chapter starts out strongly with the discussion of Easter Egg Class Features, where higher-level D&D has expectations that PCs will have access to certain magic items or similar features in order to function. For example, around 9th level Rogues need a way to remain hidden from enemies who can auto-detect their presence regardless of their Hide/Move Silently roll, while past 7th level characters specializing in mounted combat need a sufficiently powerful mount to reasonably survive.

Thoughts: Largely I agree with this, as the authors are noting some very common shortcomings of 3rd Edition that many groups have dealt with in actual play. Unlike other essays here it doesn't provide a bunch of new rules to fix it, but rather highlights common levels of power where such things will crop up during a campaign.

The next several essays cover perceived shortcomings in magic and magic items, such as giving level 6+ PCs the ability to cast Greater Magic Weapon once per day so they can "power up" existing magic weapons rather than trading out their +1 flaming swords for +3 swords, or complaining about how most material components are bad jokes (bat guano being used for Fireball and Tongues constructing a miniature tower of Babel) but don't offer up a solution for this last part. One notable essay talks about how supplement bloat exponentially increases the powers of Clerics and Druids, for they effectively have access to all spells when preparing them. The Tomes' proposed house rule limits such classes to 1 non-PHB spell per class level.

One essay is quite the edge case: pointing out how the Outsider monster type gives proficiency with all martial weapons, and that said type encompasses everything from slaadi to yeth hounds. The authors propose a fix where PCs don't gain new weapon proficiencies for changing type and that monsters are proficient with whatever weapons they happen to be holding. The authors note that the DM "ruling by common sense" isn't a viable solution as "I'm pretty sure my gut tells me different things that your gut tells you," but acknowledges that it's better than no solution at all. I'm honestly surprised they didn't bring up the fact that Aasimar and Tieflings are Outsiders and thus eligible for martial weapon proficiency; the latter race is a very popular choice even with the Level Adjustment! It's something I'd honestly see come up in play a lot more often than say, someone who has 10 levels in the Alienist Prestige Class, which is one cited example.

There's another essay about how the rules for stealth (Hide skill in particular) requiring the sneaker to always have either cover or concealment actually harms Rogues and similar archetypes, as most enemies have darkvision and opens up "technically right but is counterintuitive" rules such as using tower shields to Hide. While hitting on some good points, I am a bit surprised that the authors didn't note how the splitting up of stealth and perception into 2 skills each further weighs things against the people doing the sneaking. The more rolls you have to make in order to remain undetected, the higher the chance for overall failure. There's a reason why Pathfinder and 4e/5e combined them together.

Thoughts: I honestly don't think most gamers give much thought to material components, so the complaints about them being "MacGyver technology disguised as magic" or jokes don't really concern me. The Outsider weapon proficiency feels super-situational, and between it and the Hide rules don't really address what I see as more common problems arising in games even if they are noting problems in the rules.

But perhaps the most significant change in game design are Variants for the Polymorph Spell, spells which in 3.5 were notoriously wordy and unintuitive. The authors propose two fixes: the first is where the caster effectively vanishes and is replaced by a monster who shares the caster's alignment, personality, and goals (albeit an altered intellect can impact how they express this), where damage to the monster is carried over to the caster. The second fix more or less keeps the caster's default stat block intact, and the spells automatically grant certain features by default and the caster can choose from a list of abilities in line with the monster's theme. There are multiple spells for both fixes, with the former being split between "polymorph self/other/mass" and the latter being five spells in line with broad species of human/lycanthropy/monstrous/fiend/dragon forms.

Beyond the Polymorph fixes, the chapter provides us with outright new magic in the Necromantic Spells entry. The authors note that the necromancy school is heavily stacked in favor of high-level play, with the lower levels having rather unimpressive and situational uses. We get 9 new spells, all but 1 of which are 1st to 3rd level and 1 being 4th. Most are appropriately thematic such as Form of Death (2nd level, creature touched is treated as undead for mechanics purposes for the next 24 hours) and Congealing Consumption (2nd level, close-range AoE that nauseates creatures who fail a Will save). But some are not exactly death or undeath-related but have sinister applications, such as Curse of Crumbling Conviction (4th level, instantaneously cause a creature who fails their save to become apathetic and Neutral-aligned, and will willfully adopt the alignment of the next creature who makes them Helpful) and Puppet Dance (3rd level, creature with a physical body who fails a Reflex save cannot voluntarily move, and the caster can spend a standard action to have the victim take a standard action that isn't a spell). This latter examples are actually in line with 3.5 Necromancy, which tended to be a broad-purpose "dark magic" label for non-necromancy stuff such as the Fear spell.

Three spells deserve calling out, for they make use of a new type of location known as a Tomb. Detailed in the 14th Chapter, a Tomb is a location that is highly attuned to the Negative Energy Plane, which grants undead within it fast healing 1 and cannot be turned or rebuked, but undead also cannot be created within a Tomb by spell or by monstrous ability. Tasha's Tomb Transport is akin to a highly-situational Teleport that can only be cast and used to travel between Tombs; Tomb Tile Tessellation can be used to gradually turn an area into a Tomb with each casting applying to a 10 foot cube; and Tasha's Tomb Tainting can remove various supernatural effects (consecration, desecration, etc) property from an area, albeit this last spell requires a costly material component worth 500 gold pieces.

Thoughts: Polymorph can indeed use simplification, and the proposed spell fixes more or less do the job. I also agree with the observation that necromancy spells are quite top-heavy. One thing the Tome authors didn't directly address is that Clerics make better necromancers than arcane casters. However, all of the new spells are exclusive to Sorcerers and Wizards, so I believe the authors were aware of this and designed them with this in mind.

The next significant section of this chapter concerns Fiendish Spheres and Other Spheres. We talked about those in length back in the Character Base Classes chapter, so no need to go over them again. But our last significant section is Optional Rules for Friends, covering a broad amount of material such as greater restrictions on the Wish spell to close up exploits (notably how casting it as a spell-like ability such as via a djinni noble or efreet can obviate the need to pay XP costs); alteration to Damage Reduction so that certain materials can overlap for DR purposes or silver weapons having no damage penalty; and why fiends would care so much about mortal souls and the Material Plane rather than the infinite amount of other planes out there. For this last one, the primary reason is that creatures on the Material Plane cannot be called or summoned against their will, and is thus a highly desirable location to take refuge from the oppressive fiendish hierarchies. The last themed essay is a detailed write-up for Planar Ally and Planar Binding, providing advice for what orders and services a summoned creature is willing to do, whether for a price or for free, and what they will never do even on threat of destruction.

Thoughts: I believe that the "can only call/summon creatures against their will on the Material Plane" is a house rule the Tomes inserted, as I don't see any such restrictions in the Core Rules on where such spells can be cast. It does provide a good explanation as to why Outsiders are so interested in the Material Plane, although one could argue that it being the highest concentration of mortal souls in most settings is another reason.

The write-ups for being more specific and restrictive on what Wish and higher-level summon spells can do can cut down on some exploits, although there are still loopholes. For example, Wishes that are free and have no XP cost include magic items costing 15,000 gold or less. But using Wish to raise the dead (even if an undead, construct, or soul is utterly destroyed) requires the expenditure of 3,000 XP. However, a Scroll of Raise Dead or Resurrection falls within the 15k or less confines of a "Free Wish," and while less powerful in that it doesn't cover the earlier parenthetical examples, it does obviate the XP cost for making such scrolls and casting such spells in the first place. This is just what I spotted, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were other such exploits out there. I do like the more detailed write-up on reasonable behavior and services for called and bound outsiders, although I feel that its wordy entry may make a lot of players go "this isn't worth it" and pass on it.

Thoughts So Far: My favorite parts of this chapter are the Easter Egg Class Features, new Necromancy spells, and the Polymorph fix. The other essays and house rules I'm more ambivalent on, with the Spheres being perhaps my least favorite on account of how I pointed out in Chapter 5 how easy they are to abuse via the "take a Sphere 3 times to gain all its spells at-will." Some of the essays are to a more personal taste, like with material components, or correctly identify a problem but cover more niche cases instead of what I see are the more common causes of said problem, like with Aasimar/Tiefling weapon proficiencies.

Join us next time as we go dungeon-delving in Chapter 13: Adventuring!

 

[Libertad]

So I'm going to be wrapping up my review of the Frank and K Tomes soon (have 2 posts to go), so I've been interested in reviewing some more 3.5 products. I figured to ask here and other places to get a bit of a read on what people might find interesting for me to cover. I have 8 products in mind. One is technically 3 books (Key of Destiny) but would be best covered as one continuous review. I made emojis for each. Vote for the ones you'd be most interested in hearing about

Dragonlance Key of Destiny Adventure Path: DL's only 3rd edition AP going from 1st to 20th level. My white whale of reviews, it was my very first reviewed product online but I stopped due to fatigue.

Elder Evils: The last 3.5 book published, a collection of world-ending threats to be BBEGs.

Midnight 2nd Edition Core Book: 3rd party campaign setting strongly inspired by Lord of the Rings, is basically "dark fantasy where Sauron won"

Monte Cook Presents Iron Heroes: Actually written by Mike Mearls, it was a rules variant for imagining 3.5 as a low-magic world where the PCs were primarily amazing martial characters.

Monte Cook’s World of Darkness: Monte Cook's world of darkness homebrew setting. As is to be expected, Mages break the game.

Spycraft 2.0: Like D20 Modern, but better balanced and designed.

True Sorcery: Green Ronin's "build your own spells on the fly" variant magic system.

Zelda D20: A very in-depth homebrew on running games set in the worlds of the Tri-Force.

 

[GreyLord]

I'm much more interested in adventures than a post by post review of each section of an RPG rulebook, which means the Key of Destiny Dragonlance adventure path probably would be far more interesting to me than the other ones.

 

[Pedantic]

I've always had a soft spot for True Sorcery.

 

[Libertad]

Chapter 13: Adventuring​

This chapter is quite fluff-heavy, primarily covering dungeons, fantasy ecologies, and adventure ideas and inspirations for planar travel. We first start out with the Socialnomicon, a collection of essays discussing the normalization of violence in D&D and how that impacts society beyond adventurers and monsters. It also talks about how even in a land where raiding and empire-building are an accepted reality, there are still times where “things are taken too far.” This is most exemplified in an essay entitled…

13.1.2 Razing Hell: When Genocide is the Answer

Sometimes in history there would come a great villain who just didn't get with the program. The Classical example is the Assyrians. Those bastards went around from city to city stacking heads in piles and levying 100% taxation and such to conquered foes. They became. . . unpopular, and eventually were destroyed as a people. That's the law of the jungle as far back as there are any records: if a group pushes things too far the rules of mercy and raiding simply stop applying. Goblins, orcs, sahuagin. . . these guys generally aren't going to cross that line. But if they do, it's OK for the gloves to come off. In fact, if some group of orcs decides to kill everyone in your village while you're out hunting so that you come home to and that you are the last survivor, other humanoids (even other Evil humanoids like gnolls) will sign up to exterminate the tribe that has crossed the line.

Cultural relativism goes pretty far in D&D. Acceptable cultural practices include some pretty over-the-top practices such as slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. But genocide is still right out. That being said, some creatures simply haven't gotten with the program, and they are kill-on-sight anywhere in the civilized world or in the tribes of savage humanoids.

Mind flayers, Kuo-Toans, and [Monster] simply do not play the same game that everyone
else is playing, mostly because their culture simply does not understand other races as having value. And that means that even other Evil races want to exterminate those peoples as a public service. Like the Assyrians, they've simply pushed their luck too far, and the local hobgoblin king will let you marry his daughter if you help wipe them out of an area.

Solitary intelligent monsters often get into the same boat as the Kuo-Toans. Since the Roper really has no society (and possibly the most obscure language in Core D&D), it's very difficult for it to understand the possible ramifications of offending pan-humanoid society. So now they've done it, and they really haven't noticed the fallout they are receiving from that decision. Ropers pretty much attack anything they see, and now everyone that sees a roper attacks them. In the D&D worlds, ropers are on the brink of extinction and it probably never even occurs to them that their heavy tendrilled dealings with the other races have pushed them to this state.

Thoughts: I dunno about you folks, but in most fantasy media I read that deals with genocide, it’s portrayed as a crime without comparison and not “the people who were genocided might have actually deserved it.”

The Thermodynaminomicon and Bionomicon talk about the ecologies and natural resources of a typical D&D world. The former talks about how consumable energy in the Underdark is heavily supplemented not just by mushrooms, but also planar portals. Tying into this is how organic material that would ordinarily become fossil fuel is instead consumed by subterranean scavengers. The latter series of articles talks a lot more about how many living creatures in D&D settings are artificially created, like chimaeras and demons who are formed from mage experiments or divine intervention, This allows for suspension of disbelief when it comes to “what role does this monster fill in nature?”

Thoughts: While not covering anything really new or groundbreaking, I find these essays a fine point to cover for the discussion of fictional ecologies and why they don’t need to make that much ecological sense.

The Empirinomicon overviews several major Underdark civilizations and their methods of government. For example, myconids rely heavily on undead and the natural growth of fungal spores to claim territory, but they can more or less coast on by with an nonaggressive foreign policy as their resources and numbers are much more easily replenishable than other Underdark civilizations. Another example is how the illithid’s most notable ability for empire-building aren’t their psionic enchantments but their natural ability to at-will Planeshift. This lets them scour brains and resources in places sufficiently far-removed enough from their actual homes to avoid retaliation they’d otherwise suffer from regularly preying on those closer to them. Interestingly, the entry on Kuo-Toas contradicts the earlier genocide essay, where it says that despite hating everyone else and hope for the world’s destruction, their society is still reliant upon trade and that the only reason the aboleth haven’t wiped them out is due to laziness.

Thoughts: The writeups are kind of standard in that they closely approximate a lot of what we know and think about when it comes to said civilizations, although there are some unique innovations I like, such as the discussion on the illithid’s strategic use of Plane Shift to focus their imperialism far from their doorstep.

The Lexiconinomicon covers languages and spellbooks. The former category discusses how making languages more “realistic” is a headache, and starts out with a condemnation of the Forgotten Realms regional languages. As to why said setting’s languages are a failure, the writers just say that anyone who has attempted to follow it can attest to, but don’t really explain why to people who might be unfamiliar with the setting. As a Realms fan, I don’t see the problem; unless it’s merely adding more languages for players and GMs to keep track of and won’t see use in play? That’s the closest thing that comes to mind.

The authors also talk about how the Common tongue isn’t a unique and distinct language of its own, but a “pidgin,” and that people who grew up speaking a pidgin pseudo-language are actually speaking what is known as a “Creole” which is a real language.

The Tomes thus proposes two options for use of languages in a D&D setting: “High Fantasy,” where there’s only 3 languages tops: Common, the Old Tongue, and the Dark Tongue. And “Remotely Realistic,” where every major culture has a “Classical” language used primarily for written text and formal occasions, and that existing magic/planar languages can serve this purpose. Additionally, that there’s no Common tongue but that “uneducated commoners will speak all kinds of crazy local tongues (Wenn, Lapp, Prussian, etc.) and you may well have to turn to magical translation or local educated characters (such as the town wizard or a local aristocrat) in order to get your point across to the Plebes.”

The spellbook section talks about how it’s not very hard for wizards to learn spells from other peoples’ spellbooks, and that taking away spellbooks may as well be a death knell to the victimized mage. So wizards who actually want to safeguard their spells from others make use of the Secret Page spell to make the contents of their spellbooks look like something else, and also create copies of spellbooks via Fabricate and the Wish Economy. In the latter case, high-level wizards can give out copies of spellbooks to apprentices at virtually no cost to themselves. There’s also a decent-length essay on rules exploits for wizards to learn divine spells:

As written, a Wizard can learn a spell from any spellbook page or scroll she has deciphered. Deciphering a page or scroll is a spellcraft check that, among other things, tells you whether it is arcane or divine. That means that under the rules as written, a Wizard can take Cleric Scrolls and copy them into her spellbook and then they become Wizard spells of the same level. Honestly. . . most DMs will not let you do that even though the PHB is extremely specific that that is exactly what you can do. But if it's really important to you to learn Cleric spells, you still can.

Many DMs put in the additional restriction that to learn a spell it must be Arcane, or even that it must be a Sor/Wiz spell. That's actually fine, because the world of D&D includes Nagas, who cast Cleric spells as Sorcerer spells. They can make scrolls (or you can make a scroll with a Naga), and then you can learn those precious Cleric spells if you really care. Chances are, though, that you don't care. Clerics are much better than Wizards in every single aspect of their characters except in their spell-list. And while there are certainly some gems on the Cleric list as far as spells go, chances are if you wanted to build a character who casts those spells you'd be better off having been a Cleric in the first place. Have better hit points, Saves, and BAB. So while learning Cleric spells is probably a pretty stupid goal, it is definitely achievable no matter how strict your DM is.

The first paragraph is actually a legitimate rules exploit, although it was closed up in the 3.5 Rules Compendium. As that was published near the end of that Edition’s lifespan so might be too little, too late. Regarding the naga exploit and the bolded, this is seriously underestimating the power of the DM saying the word “no.” Or even something along the lines of never having the party encounter a naga while adventuring, and they cannot be summoned by spells for they are Aberrations and not Outsiders.

Thoughts: I don’t like either of the variants for languages. The first is way too simple for my liking, and the latter both smacks of “stupid Dung Ages peasants” elitism and doesn’t really add anything to the average D&D campaign. The spellbook essay on wizards using Secret Page and Fabricate to create backups is innovative, although the naga exploit feels like too many words spent just to say “if you befriend a naga NPC, then they can teach your wizard how to cast cleric spells.” And framing it more as a stupid idea that is technically within the rules rather than a cool potential plot idea is missed potential in my humble opinion.

High Adventure in the Lower/Elemental Planes discusses how 3.5 has the expectation that other planes of existence are only suitable for 9th level and higher PCs to explore, but that there are Outsiders and inhabitants that range the Challenge Rating spectrum and that low-level adventures should also be viable. The authors acknowledge that existing planar adventures are weighed heavily in favor of high-level play, so the Tomes focuses on low-level play. Each of the 7 Lower Planes are written up with two Campaign Seeds and 10 adventure ideas* for low, middle, and high levels each. There’s an awful lot of variety here, such as frontier towns in the Nine Hells that feel like a Fantasy Old Western or scavenger-merchants-turned-warlord empire-building in Acheron.

*A lot are less like proper adventures and more like individual encounters or vague descriptive flavor text for the DM to make something sensible.

Thoughts: This is the most memorable and enduring part of the Tomes for me, alongside the Fighter class and alignment essays. It even served as an inspiration for a homebrew of my own back in the day. If I had to recommend anyone take anything from the Tomes for their home campaigns, this section would be it.

To Rule in Hell and Rulership of the Lower Planes are technically two separate entries, but more or less cover the same territory. The former entry is very short, claiming that there’s inconsistency in how archfiends have been described in D&D. Three options are presented: that they’re actually gods in their own right, that they aren’t unique beings but actually titles where their usurpers actually become them, and the last being the fact that they’re merely high-level adventurers. The latter bolded entry provides the skeleton of a domain management system for PCs who take control of territories in fiendish realms, covering common resources such as planar portals, veins of “minable” souls, and specific types of architectural styles for city-building and their game effects. For example, Serpentine Labyrinths halve the movement rate of non-citizens moving through the city, while Spired cities only make flying possible for those with Good or better maneuverability.

Thoughts: I’m not vibing with these entries. The domain management stuff is incomplete, and while the divine status (or lack thereof) of archfiends has been wishy-washy, I don’t really like the Tomes’ proposed alternatives. Having the archfiends actually be high-level immortal adventurers actually feels kind of lame. It might make sense for Fraz-Urb'luu who is literally titled the Demon Prince of Deception, but I imagine that most players would be let down if they found out that Orcus was “just a 20th-level necromancer.”

The Constructanomicon is the final series of essays for this chapter. It claims that in real life the construction of sprawling subterranean complexes is impractical, so D&D dungeons need a more fantastical practical purpose to be built by non-Underdark civilizations. In short, anything covered by at least 40 feet of solid, continuous material is immune to extreme and unlimited spells such as the infamous Scry and Die tactic. While one could use such spells within a dungeon in most circumstances, using the spells to do something such as entirely bypassing the front gate to the final room is not. This security feature can still be bypassed by permanent effects such as Teleportation Circles. Castles and above-ground structures can still be secured, such as deploying the spells Mirage Arcana and Dimensional Lock to hide features and prevent extraplanar transportation. We also get discussion on the ideal use of traps, such as not placing them in areas that will make them inconvenient to navigate for the dungeon inhabitants once sprung. Or putting them in places that are “plausible” rather than being totally random or out of theme for the dungeon, such as a locked treasure vault having a lethal trap as its primary defense or a faerie home having illusory false passages to confuse intruders.

The section (and chapter) ends with 4 sample dungeons: a Hellish library that is intentionally designed to be bureaucratically confusing, the Tomb of Iuchiban from the Rokugan setting, an archmage’s garden that is populated entirely by their Simulacrums, and an elaborate series of mining tunnels contested by dwarves, kobolds, and aboleth slaves, with the former two groups having put aside their differences to fight the psionic fishes' forces.

Thoughts: Scry and die is a well-known tactic in 3.5, and commonly regarded as cheap. Most gamers aware of it typically abide by a gentleman’s agreement not to deploy such tactics, or the DM comes up with MacGuffins for their antagonists that prevent such shenanigans. Making it so that dungeons are the cheapest and most common means of guarding against such spells is pretty clever and plausible from a world-building perspective.

Chapter 14: Monsters​

Image Taken from the 2025 Monster Manual

The final chapter of the Tomes proper, this section focuses entirely on undead and doesn’t have outright new monsters so much as alterations to existing ones. We already talked about PC versions of popular undead types back in Chapter 5 and the mechanical effects of Tombs in Chapter 12, so this chapter will be much shorter than usual. Primarily we’ll cover Locations of Necromantic Importance: Necromantic Intelligence, where if enough living creatures part of an ecosystem become undead (such as entire forests) the very land itself gains a malign sentience, and has a “heart” known as a Focus which if cleansed will destroy it; Forsaken Graveyards, the sites of mass killings where corpses here are more likely to become undead and have more Hit Points and Turn resistance; Pools of Deep Shadow, which is basically an essay on how Shadows don’t overrun the typical D&D world because they’re actually summoned creatures from the Negative Energy Plane via such Pools and thus are limited in how far they can go and how long they can remain on the Material Plane; and Finality, a planar metropolis on Acheron that is the lower planes’ primary trade hub for mortal souls.

Undead Monsters discusses how common undead types such as skeletons operate in the two models of Crawling Darkness and Playing with Fire covered way back in the first post’s alignment essays. But the meat of this entry is covering just about every undead creature from official non-core 3.5 sourcebooks and how they interface with the undead-centric feats way back in Chapter 6. Namely, it details prerequisites for the creator, such as minimum character level, skill/spell knowledge, and more specific stuff such as Bloodfiends requiring the sacrifice of a CR 8 or higher demon.

Thoughts: The necromantic locations serve as neat-sounding adventure fodder. The detailed entry on undead creation at the end is a useful addition for necromancer PCs who want something more powerful than Skeletons and Zombies and longer-lasting than the monsters from Summon Undead I-IX.

Thoughts So Far: Fiends and Undead are Frank and Keith’s stock in trade, and when they’re writing about such material they’re at their best. As I said before, I found their lower-level adventure hooks for the planes of existence to be inspiring and perhaps the best parts of the Tomes. The more generic adventuring/dungeon material in these chapters veers from the neat (dungeons serving as safe bastions against Scry and Die) to the ho-hum (much ado about language and the nature of archfiends).

Normally, this would be the end of the Tomes proper. However, the Tomes were an unfinished project, so there’s still some material out there which got heavy writeups but were never truly finalized. Case in point, the Book of Gears, which takes a look at 3.5’s experience point system, crafting rules, traps, and how the Tomes would redesign them.

Join us next time as we finish this review with the Book of Gears and Community Material!