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="Ace" data-source="post: 2507471" data-attributes="member: 944">Disclaimer: I received a review copy As a DM, Ghouls are one of my favorite monsters to throw at players. Hideous, smart, scary and undead, all great traits in a monster. At least if you are the DM anyway  Unfortunately they are pretty much only useable at relatively low level.   Masterwork Monsters: Rise of the Ghouls expands the options for this monster to every level and gives even more types for DM's to play with. At $1.80 US it is an outrageously good deal.Appearance: Masterwork Monsters: Rise of the Ghouls is a 21 page PDF sparsely illustrated with non ink eating B&W illustrations. It comes in a 241k zip file that can be download in a snap by any connection. Layout is good and PDF takes advantage of the book marking feature very well. Content:This a very rules intensive book. There enough descriptive text to put the contents to use. However if you are looking for stories or world stuff you won't find it here. The book is made up of Templates (including variants) Feats and SpellsTemplates include a Ghoul, (including a nasty Ghoulish Choker as sample monster)  Lacedon, Ghast,  and after the spell section a  Bloated Ghoul (with a nice hideous illustration) Ghoul Zombie (kind of a Romero Zombie) Ghoul Hound (Ghouled Dogs) an unexpected plant template called Grave Weed and a High Ghoul Template. These templates offer a wide variety of ghouls for almost any campaign and most importantly scalability -- Now you can scare high level parties with a Lacedon Troll or a Ghouled Fire Giant or even a Ghoul Warg or 20. CWG does here what the Monster Manual should have done. Very coolMy only grump in the template list is the High Ghoul. I don't care much for the assumption of Ghouls as mindless. Personally would rather have allowed the Ghoul template to keep any class level. Still I can see the rules compliance reasons why the author chose to have a separate ghoul and high template. I just found it a tad clumsy.The book also contains a selection of feats for ghouls, Breath of Death, Eater of the Dead, Feats Magic, Feasting Ritual, Feeding Frenzy, Gnaw, Maw of the Dead, Prolonged Paralysis, and Soul Eater.  All of these shuddersome feats will enhance most Ghouls. I do have a few minor quibbles. I think the Maw of the Dead feat (which makes the Ghoul Fever special attack immediate rather than having a one day incubation) is a bit strong But otherwise I like these feats. Also nifty some of the dead eating  feats could be adapted for Maho Kiho in D20 Rokugan ala  the feasting on flesh Kiho. Its a nice bit of extra versatility. Also I would have liked to see a resist turning feat but you can’t have everything. Next section is Ghoul magic. It includes a ghoul domain and several spells the slightly redundant Create Ghoul, Elf Skin, Feast of Knowledge, Feats of Magic, Feast of Might, Ghoulish Gorging, Plague (an immediate cause disease effect, slightly under powered in my opinion) and Ravening Curse. As expected the spells are necromantic but happily they  are not restricted to ghouls and could be used by sufficiently depraved  living wizards and clerics.   The Elfskin(a paralytic protection effect) spell I can even see being used by a good mage at least if he had eschew components anyway. I highly recommend this book. It fills a needed niche and offers a lot of play value for $1.80</blockquote>

Verification