Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9826805" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/d62d4adf012f.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 433px" /> Chapter 13: AdventuringThis 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…<img src="https://media1.tenor.com/m/s1wnF2DiWA0AAAAC/skeptical-futurama.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="https://media1.tenor.com/m/AXxFgf8Bb8QAAAAd/fry-skeptical.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />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: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, <a href="https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?444042-Legal-3-5-Summonable-Monster-List" target="_blank">and they cannot be summoned by spells for they are Aberrations and not Outsiders.</a>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. <a href="https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=5581.0" target="_blank">It even served as an inspiration for a homebrew of my own back in the day.</a> 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 <a href="https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?112056-Scry-and-Die-Tactics" target="_blank">Scry and Die tactic.</a> 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.<img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/a208684b1733.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 472px" /> Chapter 14: MonstersImage Taken from the 2025 Monster ManualThe 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!</blockquote>

Verification