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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ace" data-source="post: 2507710" data-attributes="member: 944">Disclaimer: I received a review copyMasterwork Characters: Born of the Shadows details a plethora of options for your campaign, ranging from Prestige Classes to Feats, Spells and Psion powers. These pages contain enough hooks to keep your shadowy games going a long time and offer a little something for almost every DM.Appearance:Masterwork Characters: Born of the Shadows is 20 pages long. The PDF weighs in at 283K and it should be no problem to download even on dial up. It is sparsely illustrated and laid out in a way that both printing and on screen reading should be easy. The book marking is also excellent though I would have liked a listing for each spell.Content: This PD is very versatile covering everything from planar notes (in a sidebar on the plane of shadow to prestige classes and everything in between.It starts with a template called Shadow Born which grants access to the Shadow feats in this pdf, 30 foot dark vision ,some minor boosts to spell casting and a racial bonus to intimidate in exchange for a –2 con. It looks balanced though the con hit is a bit painful and will deter a lot of players from taking the template.   Also Preferred class  Cleric seems a bit odd to me as well but that can easily be dropped.Next up are the Secrets of the Shadows. There are a dozen of these feats with a nice mix for just about every class. Any character concept can find at least one feat that would be useful. I find this fact to be a really good design decision as it makes the book a lot more usuableThe feats are Blinding Strike, Darksight, Death in the Shadows, Duskwalker, Ebon Adept, Eyes of Ebon, Imbue Shadowtouch, Knife in the Dark, Owlsight, Shadowtouch and Spectral Voice. All these feats are evocatively named and for the most pretty balanced. If anything they are a bit on the weak sideThe next section details 3 prestige classes.  These classes offer more shadow related options for Monks, Fighter types, and Arcane Casters. This layout  is a nice synergy with the rogue oriented Shadowdancer. My one quibble here is that the book could have used a Shadow Priest type of class, just to complete the setThe prestige classes are the Dark Hand, which offers mainly monks (or possibly other unarmed fighters)  a wide range off negative energy based powers. This class would be great for a tainted chi type concept and look quite fun The next is the Ebon Magus. This class  offers 9 full caster levels along with a bunch of shadow related and shadow magic powers. The class might be a bit on the strong side but it is cool enough that many DM’s will overlook that. Frankly I kind of want to play oneThe last class is the Shadow Knight. This class grafts some roguish abilities (including exotic weapon proficiencies) and some shadow powers into a kind of vigilante concept. It is an unusual class that looks versatile and interesting. I normally don’t care much for PRC’s but these classes make me think of a party of Night Men with one of each and a Shadowdancer besides. That is unusual for me and I guess the best compliment I can pay is that I want to use them in my game soon.Following this are the Secrets of the Shadows the Psion and Magic sectionIn addition to a Shadow domain there one psion ability Dark Flesh which grants a living darkness form and Nine spells.These spells Blacklight, Dark Betrayer, Dead of Night, Night and Fog, Nightchills, Shadowfear, Shadowsight and Shadows Step. These spells seem to fit nicely with the SRD Shadow and Darkness related spells and are pretty well balanced for most games. The final rules section are the Artifacts of the Shadows. There are 7 items, one weapon (the Midnight Star) 1 armor (The Blackmail) and 5 Wondrous items (Cloak of Darkness, Darklight Lantern, Dragon lenses, Flute of the Night, and Liquid Darkness) These items are well designed and useful for a wide range of characters. My personal favorite has to be the Flute of the Night, which is a rogue summoning version of the horn of Valhalla. I can imagine the mischief factor on that one already. Ending this list is a solitary mundane item Metal Black. This item is a tad expensive at 5GP but a good edition to the adventurers pack anyway.I like this book. It sticks to the theme, gives something for every class and is a very good deal at under $3.</blockquote>

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