Libram Equitis - Compiled Edition
About a year ago, it seemed like every other new book on the d20 scene was a collection of Prestige Classes. The flood his died down a bit now, which is why it is nice to see Ambient releasing this compiled version of their Libram Equitis products, at a time when the marketplace is a little less over-supplied.
Libram Equitis contains a huge amount of content: the core of this is the 50 Prestige Classes, but there are also new spells and clerical domains, a 'one-page' version of MEG's Blight Magic rules, and a small collection of psionic devices. It's nice to see a book give as much support to psionics as this one does, actually. There are several psionic classes in the book, some of them with very cool 'concepts' that ought at least to get a few people thinking about introducing psionics to their campaign.
The PDF market is still new enough that people often don't consider the unique issues of the format when designing their products. However, Ambient have obviously given some serious thought to the matter, which is much to the benefit of the compiled Libram Equitis. While the book is still in a portrait layout, rather than the more screen-friendly landscape alternative, each Prestige Class has been neatly set off on its own group of pages, to simplify the process of printing only the class(es) you need, without any extraneous text. This does lead to some large areas of white space, but that's not really an issue in an electronic product, where the page count does not have as big an impact on the cost of the item.
In keeping with their experience in producing PDF product, Ambient have given the compiled Libram Equitis a clean, simple layout. There is little art, but what there is, is competently drawn and appropriate to the page on which it has been placed.
The only complaint I would have about the design and structure of the book is that the text has a significant number of simple errors: spelling mistakes, references to the wrong class name where abilities have obviously been copy/pasted from one class to another, and a large number of reference errors, such as table numbers that do not match the references quoted in the text. There is only one occasion where this has any significant impact on the clarity and completeness of the text, however: the Pale Rider PrC makes reference to a 'ghoul template' that was not included in the book. However, Ambient have indicated that they will be making this template available, so all should be fine on that front very shortly.
As the Prestige Classes are very much the 'core' of the product, comprising some 90% of the material, I'll cover them last, first giving a quick summary of the other things you can expect to find within the book:
New Spells & Domains
Libram Equitis Compiled offers 21 new spells and 8 new domains.
As the spells are principally intended for the use of the Prestige Classes within the book (especially the Earthborn and Anam'Glac classes) they generally have a good flavour and theme to them. Most are interesting and distinctive, and there is rarely a sense of "a fireball by any other name" that sometimes plagues spell collections.
The domains seem well designed, though the granted power for the Positive Energy Domain has no duration listed (I'd suggest one round per level). Several of the domains would make good alternatives to those in the Players Handbook. For instance, Ambient's Stone domain could easily be used in place of the Earth domain, or Negative Energy for the Death domain. This would be a simple and efficient way to give an existing deity in your campaign a bit of 'new flavour'.
Although they are not actually covered in this section it is worth noting that the Society of Heavenly Movements prestige class has more than a dozen 'Astrological Studies' spell lists which would also make good additional domains, if a granted power were added to them.
Blight Magic
The material in this one page summary is based on one of MEG's Arcane Mysteries books. Blight Magic is a 'quick and dirty' way for casters to boost their magical power, but it carries a corrupting influence that will eventually overcome any character who employs it.
As described, Blight Magic seems like a lot of bookwork: I'd say it was much more suitable for an NPC than a PC, partly because of the this fact, but mainly because the eventual destruction of the character using this form of magic is pretty much assured, should they actually use the abilities it grants them.
Psionic Devices
The book contains a small number of psionic devices, which are presented in the text as ancient artefacts of a long-fallen civilisation. The items appear balanced, but useful, and should present a nice 'wrinkle' for any psionics-friendly game. There are also suggestions for incorporating them into non-psionic campaigns.
Prestige Classes
As noted above, the bulk of this product is the Prestige Classes - so how do they measure up?
The answer, in the main, is very well indeed. Naturally, in a collection this large - 50 in all - there are bound to be a some that are less interesting than others, and some that seem quite similar in purpose and design (the Longbowman and the Military Archer come to mind immediately in this regard). However, taken as a whole, the collection here is very strong. Particularly if you are a DM.
Why do I add that comment about DMs? Simply put, 20 of the 50 classes are NPC-focussed. Generally, this is because they are self-destructive or hopelessly vile (or both), though there are also a few cases where the class was quite evidently designed to fit a role that is not appropriate for the needs of a typical adventuring group. The Phalanx, for instance, is designed for warriors who fight in massed blocks: not a common occurrence for most parties. The Raserei is at the other extreme: the class's propensity for flying into berserk rages and killing friends as well as foes makes them very poor 'team players'!
The chapter opens with a description of what will be found within it, as well as some brief but practical advice on tailoring the Prestige Classes for campaigns. It also warns that Ambient have taken the somewhat unusual tack of creating Prestige Classes with 3, 7 and 12 level progressions, in addition to the normal 5 and 10. The stated intent is that this allows for scope from 'minor specialisation' to career-defining choices. I'm not sure that this intent is successfully communicated by the classes in question, and the fact that there are only five in the whole book that do not use the typical 5 or 10 level progressions suggests that this was an early experiment that did not continue. Interestingly, one of those 5, the Phalanx, uses a four-level progression, which is not mentioned at all in the introduction.
The pre-requisites for the classes can also be rather non-standard, with some classes accessible as early as 2nd level (the Military Archer) through to some that require the character to be a minimum of 18th (the Dark Heart). While the respective power of these classes does reflects the ease or difficulty of reaching them, I'm still not convinced of the value of a 10-level class you can only reach at 18th level, nor that a class you can take at 2nd should really be considered 'prestige'.
On the subject of power levels, it's likely that most people who reads this product will have issues with the mechanical balance of one or more of the classes within. However, 'balanced' is a far more mutable term than most people acknowledge, and I suspect the list of offending classes would vary from campaign to campaign, and reader to reader. Tweaking the power levels to suit your individual campaign should not prove too difficult, as the core concepts and execution of the classes are generally very good.
So what kinds of classes will you get for your money?
Well, as noted before, you'll get a lot of useful villainous classes, if you are a DM. Roughly a dozen of the classes (most notably the Anam'Glac, Corpulent and Mad Tailor) would be quite at home in the BoVD - in fact, had they been there, that product would have been improved. Ambient's evil Prestige Classes are far more creepy and disturbing than those in the BoVD.
You'll also get five psionics-based classes with lots of cool ideas and concepts behind them. In fact, conceptually, Ambient's product is very strong indeed. The majority of the classes have great flavour, interesting abilities, and plenty of plot hooks hanging off them. For me, the book's only real weakness in this area was the five archery-based classes, only one of which I felt would be intriguing enough to attract PCs: the other four were functional, but uninspired.
To sum up, this is a strong collection of Prestige Classes. You'll probably want to make a few changes to some of the classes, but I find that to be true of most such collections. The fact is, the compiled Libram Equitis has a lot of great ideas in it, the vast majority of which have been very well executed in their transition to game statistics. There are some very memorable and evocative classes in here, such as the Anam'Glac, Bone Archer, Corpulent, Dark Minstrel, Earthbound, Knight Channeler, Mad Tailor, Society of Heavenly Movements, Timer and Troll Hunter. Classes that DMs and players alike can really sink their teeth into.
I've rated this product a 4; if you’re a regular DM, consider that a very high 4 - pushing a 5. You'll get heaps of use out of this product.
