Pantheon and Pagan Faiths
There have been only a few books written that are devoted to the gods and their followers. There are of course many for the cleric but they are usually oriented around the class and offer little in the gods areas. Then there are the books that do describe the gods like Wizards’ of the Coast Deities and Demigods, AEG’s Gods, and Sword And Sorcery’s Divine and the Defeated. But for the most part these have just been okay with some usefulness but not all that great. The one book that people do talk about all the time is Green Ronin’s Book of the Righteousness. It has a great pantheon, very well written, but its one fault seems to be not the easiest to use from. It is a rules light book with little for the player in terms of mechanics. It has great descriptions of the churches, the gods, and their mythology though. Pantheon and Pagan Faiths is equally as good for different reasons. It gives great descriptions of the gods and also has some very good and original mechanic to offer players and DMs.
Pantheons and Pagan Faiths is a 3.5 book by Mystic Eye Games. It has been released as a PDF through Ronin Arts. The PDF is the same as the print version in terms of look and content. The two hundred and eight page book is very well laid out and has some great art. The table and headers and everything about the books look really fits well together. The PDF is nicely book marked with a great four page index.
The book is designed for use with divine classes but does not limit itself o just the cleric, druid, paladin and ranger. It also has options for witches and shamans. Both of them are new core classes presented in the book. The book is packed with information. It boosts a complete pantheon, the two core classes and ten prestige classes, almost one hundred new feats, one hundred and fifty new spells, birth sign feats that grow with the characters, new and cool options for many of the divine classes, over forty domains, a piety system that has rules for direct interaction with gods, rules for saints, and plenty of other items.
The book is designed for the The Hunt: Rise of Evil campaign setting. While it fits the dart and gothic nature of that setting very well, it is also very usable by most other d20 fantasy games. The class options, feats, spells, domains, etc are all easily transportable to other traditional settings.
The prestige classes offer some interesting different takes on some nice archetypes. Some of the prestige class themes are present in other classes from other books though the classes for the most part try new things a little more then other classes do. For instance there is the Beast Friend: This is like the Beast Master from Complete Adventurer but it is more spell oriented granting spells of up to fourth level. The best part is that the class has the ability to magically heal its many animal companions. It does that by taking damage himself and using that ability to heal the animals. It does get some good bonuses for using wild empathy with magical beasts and beast.
There are plenty of new feats in the book and the most interesting are the Birth Sign Feats. These can only be taken at first level and increase in power as the character gains level though none of them really seem over the top power wise. They represent when the character was born and what stars and constellations where in the sky. This gives the character a type of destiny and the abilities of the feat help in that destiny. Each feat grants abilities as the character gains level including when the character is epic. For instance the Magician Birth Sign gives a minor skill increase at low levels, increase his caster level a bit at medium levels, gain a higher skill bonus at high levels, and at epic can boost his caster level another time per day. These really offer a good background and direction for characters. The destiny aspect alone has huge adventure possibilities with characters role playing towards or even fighting it. Many of the other feats are also creative. Like the Strength of One gives dwarfs higher attack bonuses with the more enemies that threaten him. The Fury of Nature allows rangers the versatility to exchange spells for an extra attack.
The spells are of a nice variety and creativity. The r are some really good nature oriented spells that give the Druids and Rangers a little more umph not that the Druid really needed it. I do find the Ranger and Paladins gain a nice selection of new spells with Rangers getting about twice as many as the Paladin.
There is a lot of interesting ideas with saints here. They have some saints fully detailed out and not all of them are necessarily good. One, Justin Trublood, is of Temptation and Deception and it does not spell out specifically if he is good or evil leaving it up to the DM though there is a good sidebar on it. Lots of the god and saint information is campaign specific but makes for some very creative examples. The gods are very well fleshed out with specific dogmas, forms, holy places, histories, current conflicts and activities, and rituals and relics. There is a lot of really good campaign information here.
Pantheon and Pagan Faiths is a highly creative book on gods and their followers. It offer s a full pantheon that is easy to use and very complete detailing many different types of gods in great detail and with lots of useful information that can be used directly in a campaign. It is designed for their Campaign Setting built like many books specific to one place it has lots of options that can be used in any fantasy setting. This is fantastic book on the divine classes and the gods and it is easily one of the best to ever cover this area.
