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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009873" data-attributes="member: 172">Pale Designs: A Poisoner's HandbookPale Designs is a d20 System rules supplement detail poisons as well as a number of related rules variants, classes, creatures, and spells. Pale Designs is by authors Steven Creech and Kevin Reusch, with a number of other contributors. Pale Designs makes extensive use of open game content, drawing many poisons from other d20 System products.A First LookPale Designs is a 96 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $24.95. The book is costly in part due to the full color interior.The cover has a stony looking background, with artwork on the front by Alex Leonard depicting an elvish character poised on the side of some building against the backdrop of a moonlit city.The interior art is color, and features art by Alex Leonard, Andrew Baker, Ben Eargle, Jamie Powers, and Bastion Press art director Todd Morasch. The interior artwork varies is quality from poor to good. I have never been a fan of Morash's artwork, but his work herein does seem to be an improvement over his early work for Bastion in that there are less malformed looking gnarl-knuckled creatures, but his work still seems to be replete with the texture of bare muscle. Ben Eargle's work seem crisp but a bit too cartoony to take seriously. The remaining artists seem to do fairly decent work, but overall, I feel the art in this book is a step down from Bastion's Spells & Magic and Guildcraft.The interior text font is conservatively sized and tables are compact, and the book makes good use of space. However, the choice of header font is atrocious. The header font is a stylized font that uses several unusual letter shapes. For example, the "a's" in the book appear to be upside-down "e's", and vice versa, which is very aggravating to read.A Deeper LookA major part of the book is a collection of poisons from various OGC sources such as S&SS's Creature Collection I&II, FFG's Traps & Treachery, and Mongoose Publishing's Quintessential Rogue, among numerous others. Each poison is collected here with descriptions as well as a compiled table summarizing each poison's major statistics.The book introduces a few conventions of its own straightaway, including a toxcicity rating and a variant rule for poison damage.Toxicity is a numerical rating estimating the general effectiveness of a poison. Toxicity is derived by looking up various characteristics of the poison (save DC, initial and secondary damage dice and other effects.) The basic concept is sound and it yields a number that might be used in other mechanics. However, the tables by which toxicity is derived seem flawed. First off, they provide a larger modifier for toxicity for poisons that do 1 point of ability damage than those that do 1d2 or 1d3 (and an identical modifier to that provided for 1d4 and 1d6 points of damage. At first I thought this was merely a typo and that the intention was for 1 point of damage to have a -1 modifier to toxicity. If this is the case, the authors failed to recognize the error when figuring the toxicity of the various poisons listed herein, because a few spot checks show that the table is used precisely as it is presented.Second and more subtly, the toxicity rating fails to take into account the fact that constitution damage is more serious than other forms of ability damage. Had the authors more closely looked at the poison design system in one of their OGC resources - the Quintessential Rogue - they might have realized that.Toxicity is used as the basis for a variant damage rule presented in the book. A poison has a "variant damage" rating equal to two times the poison's toxicity, meaning that really powerful poisons will have a high variant damage rating. Further, under this variant, the save against the secondary effect is raised by +2. If a character fails the secondary effect save, in addition to the listed effect, the character takes HP damage equal to the variant damage rating. Each subsequent round, the character takes additional damage equal to one less than the previous round.This is a very poorly conceived option. The stated purpose of this variant is to "show how truly dangerous poison can be if left untreated." However, I think any sort of attribution to the true nature of poison is lost in this rule; it is a character-killer pure and simple and massively distorts all poisons into extremely lethal toxins, considering that the damage a character takes is on the order of the square of the toxicity.As an example of why I think this optional rule is so ill-conceived, consider the statistics for poison ivy presented in the book. Poison ivy has a save DC of 11, initial damage "-1 to rolls", secondary damage: 1 dex, which are a reasonable facsimile of poison ivy's effect under the d20 rules. Under the rules in Pale Designs, poison ivy has a toxicity 6, variant damage 12. Twelve points of damage is more than enough damage to kill the average commoner in D&D, so poison ivy kills 60% of such unfortunates who stumble across it. A character would take 78 points of damage in just over two minutes after contact with this plant that in reality does little more than irritate the skin.In addition to the compiled poisons from other d20 System products, Pale Designs presents a number of new poisons split into various categories. Oddly, these new poisons are not mixed with the compiled list, and are not even adjacent to the compiled list. Further, unlike the compiled lists, the new poisons are split into sections by type (alchemical, natural, magical, etc.) instead of being compile alphabetically. The content of the new poison section is well written and has some interesting concepts, but the odd arrangement results in some backwards references to rules regarding poison creation after the compiled section.Sandwiched between the compiled poisons list and the new poisons is a short section on applying existing knowledge skills and wilderness lore to the task of collecting venom from creatures for use as poison.After the poisons is a short section on drugs. Drugs operate similar to poisons in that they have both an initial and secondary effect. Drugs differ from poisons in that they have a much longer duration between the initial and secondary effects, and the initial effect is often something other than ability damage (like hallucinations, euphoria, or rage). The drug rules are essentially identical to those in Green Ronin's Arcana: Societies of Magic, and the sample drugs include those from that book.A short section entitled Alchemical Processes and Products provide modifications to poison that can alter it's d20 system characteristics. A skilled alchemist can alter a poison in various ways, such as making it more potent or changing its method of delivery.The equipment section provides a number of mundane items of interest to assassins and other practitioners of poisons. This includes new devices to deliver poisons, labs for making them, and so on.The traps section is extremely brief, providing a grand total of eight new traps, some of which could have been safely folded into the equipment chapter.As with the equipment, the magic items are of special interest to the poisoner. Examples include the drinking weapon quality, which allows the weapon to absorb any liquid, and upon command release it, and the staff of the scorpion, which contains a number of poison-related spells.The new feats are likewise related to poisons, most of them being OGC, but some of them new. New feats include adept poisoner which reduces the amount of poison needed to deliver an attack, and three monster feats, venomous, venom immunity, and venomous spittle. The monster feats seem the most powerful, probably too much so for feats (whether they apply to "monsters" or not.)Of the OCG feats, one that I did like but had not seen before was Brew Magical Poison. I liked this feat better than the poison creation feats I had seen before. Brew Poison from FFG's Traps & Treachery includes both magical and nonmagical poisons, while Malhavoc's Manufacture Magical Poison (which, frustratingly, is not OGC) requires no familiarity with poison on the part of creator. Brew Magical Poison goes about the task correctly: it is not required for nonmagical poisons (which, like most nonmagical items, is properly covered by skills) but requires ranks in the craft (poisonmaking) skill as a prerequisite.The section on monsters provides a number of venomous creatures or creatures otherwise related to poison. For example, the bloody tears is an animate plant that has poison that can be harvested, and the clockwork stirge is a tiny construct that can inject the contents of a vial in its stomach into a victim.The spells are directly or indirectly related to poison. Confidant is a high level illusion that makes a single target perceive the caster as a trusted friend. Call Poisonous Creature lets the caster call a random venomous creature; 4th or 5th level on this spell seems too low in comparison to core spells, as it allows the caster to summon an osyluth devil, which is normally not available as a summoned creature until caster has access to a 7th level summon monsters spell. Poison motes is a more straightforward poisoning spell, creating a number of motes that can later be directed to streak out and hit targets with a deadly poison.There are ten prestige classes presented in the book: the Acolyte, Anarchist, Beguiler, Bondsmen, Infiltrator, Mage Hunter, Psi-Slayer, Nightstalker, Sniper, and Trapmaster. Most of these are functionally assassin variants, though some like the anarchist represent more specific concepts. Most also have little relation to poison beyond having the poison use class ability.The prestige classes all have a section noting how the class fits into fantasy and modern settings as well as a section specific to Bastion's Oathbound setting. In truth, it is obvious that most of these classes were originally designed for fantasy; most of the concepts are not a neat fit to modern settings and the rules do not at all reflect any modern ruleset that I am aware of (for example, they lack the extra skill point and action dice rules that are part of D20 Modern advanced classes.Finally, there are two NPC classes: the canthartisan and the henchman. The canthartisan is a specialist in creating poison, and is entirely too specialized to deserve a base class. The henchman is also too specialized to deserve a base class, and to boot, it has no poison related abilities; the class feels entirely tacked on.ConclusionOne thing that I was hoping to see as a result of the Open Game and d20 System and Trademark Licenses was a bit of cross pollenation, with the best mechanics and conventions bubbling to the top. Another thing I expected to see was a bit of recycling. But where does Pale Designs belong?In truth, I think it lies somewhere in between. Look at it as a compilation if you will, but I find that the best work herein is stuff that comes from other resources. With a few exceptions, I find the all-new materials to be a little weak, such as the variant poison rules and the monstrous poison feats.But still, this is a very nice collection. If you want one stop shopping for a poison reference, this is it, and the authors did a fairly good job of choosing OGC (I think they would have done well to take a few more pages from The Quintessential Rogue.) Chances are that there is material in here that you have not been exposed to regarding poisons, and it makes a nice compilation for use at the table even if you do have many of the cited sources.Overall grade: C+-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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