Power of Faerûn
Power of Faerûn
By Ed Greenwood and Eric L. Boyd
Wizards of the Coast product number 953667200
160 pages, $29.95
I should start this review with a confession: While I enjoy the
Forgotten Realms campaign setting, I don't actively DM or play in an FR campaign, and while I generally enjoy Ed Greenwood's writing (I have read several of his novels, many of his sourcebooks, and all of his
Dragon articles),
Power of Faerûn is not a book I would ever have purchased on my own - it's focused on high-level play, and my personal preference is generally not much higher than level 12 or so. However, since I was sent a review copy by Wizards of the Coast, it's my duty to review it, but bear in mind that I'm probably not the "best fit" for a reviewer of this book.
The cover is a nice piece by Lucio Parillo depicting a bronze dragon being ridden into battle by an armored human wielding a shield and longsword. The painting wraps around to the back cover, where we see an army carrying banners with the same unicorn emblem as on the dragon-rider's shield. Lucio did a great job on the details on the armor, and the bronze dragon conforms nicely to the illustration in the
Monster Manual. The mountains in the background also struck me as being particularly well done. All in all, this is a very nice cover.
The interior artwork consists of 44 full-color illustrations and 10 monochrome runes at the chapter heads, provided by 9 different artists. In addition, there are 11 full-color maps done by cartographer Kyle Hunter, each very well done considering the "cartoony" approach he takes towards his "Downer" strip in the pages of
Dungeon (although I was a bit surprised that the two-story Ulbrinter Villa building he drew has no bathroom facilities!). The artwork is pretty good throughout; my favorites include William O'Conner's painting of Dabron Sashenstar on page 83 (actually, I particularly enjoyed the robotic-looking
stone horse he's riding - an interesting interpretation), Eric Deschamps' portrait of the herald Starblade on page 104 (it's nice to see an elven maiden who's not falling out of her clothes for a change), and Franz Vohwinkel's painting of the armored, undead Uorn on page 134 (very nice armor details, and I especially liked the chains). I was also somewhat amused by Francis Tsai's female half-orc mercenary on page 68, but mostly because her face looks very much like that of a Skrull (an alien shapeshifting race from Marvel Comics'
Fantastic Four comic books) - all she was missing were the chin-ridges!
Power of Faerûn is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: A full-page fiction blurb, followed by chapter synopses and a list of the abbreviations of other books used in this one
- Chapter One - Order in the Court: Rules for running a political-based campaign, complete with a sample court (with full-page map)
- Chapter Two - Win the Battlefield: Rules for running a military-based campaign, complete with maps of two military strongholds and NPC stats for a CR 19 ogre mage leader
- Chapter Three - Keep the Faith: Rules for running a religious-based campaign, complete with maps of two religious strongholds and NPC stats for a CR 25 fire genasi church leader (which itself includes a new magic weapon special ability and a new epic spell)
- Chapter Four - Play the Market: Rules for running an economics-based campaign, complete with a 5-level prestige class, the merchant prince, and NPC stats for a CR 23 human ranger/fighter/merchant prince
- Chapter Five - Tame the Frontier: Rules for running a campaign on the frontier, complete with maps for two frontier strongholds and NPC stats for the CR 20 ghost who haunts another stronghold which lies in ruins
- Chapter Six - King of the Road: Rules focused on wandering marshals and heralds, including a 12-level prestige class, the court herald, which is based on the loremaster prestige class from the Dungeon Master's Guide
- Chapter Seven - High-Level Challenges: Sections focusing on deities, great dragons, rival adventurers, and invading armies and hordes
- Chapter Eight - The Border Kingdoms: A geographical area of Faerûn, kind of like a one-chapter version of a book like The Shining South, Serpent Kingdoms, or Unapproachable East
- Chapter Nine - How to Rule: Advanced rules for the Leadership feat, Influence, and Rulership
The proofreading and editing jobs were a bit more slack than I'd expect from Wizards of the Coast, with a bunch of errors along the lines of improper word usage ("a" instead of "an" before a word starting with a vowel, "employs" instead of "employ," "ever" instead of "every"), improper word placement ("and" not between the last two items in a list, but one item further back), a couple instances of a lack of an apostrophe to denote possessiveness ("rivals caravans," "rivals business"), a few sentences with missing words, a few more with extraneous words (that were probably replaced with a different word during editing without the original word being removed), a sentence missing its closing parenthesis (and another sentence 7 pages later missing its opening parenthesis), a sentence ending in a comma instead of a period (and another with not only a period instead of a comma, but with the next word capitalized: "Bows. Crossbows, and slings so created bestow the shadowscourge quality upon their ammunition."), one instance of apostrophes being used incorrectly as quotation marks, a new paragraph that's lacking its indentation, a sentence with closing quotation marks but no opening quotation marks, and no less than 10 separate instances where superscripted annotations were put in normal font instead of superscript. (This last was pretty confusing at first: most of them were "Mon" - the abbreviation for
Monsters of Faerûn - and all of the instances of "helmed horrorMon" and "perytonMon" and "doomsphereMon" made it seem as if the authors were suddenly channeling a Jamaican spirit.) There were also quite a large number of items missing from the Stormhawk Keep map on page 97 that were referenced in the description, things like dotted lines representing portcullises, arrow markings, and numerous X-marks, none of which were actually present. There was also a two-page section detailing the inhabitants of a tower that suddenly switched bullet formats between the two pages, which made for a bit of confusion at first. I've certainly seen worse proofreading and editing jobs before, but this isn't up to the normal Wizards of the Coast standard of excellence that I've become accustomed to. I don't recall seeing editor Gary Sarli's name before, but he has some room for improvement in future works.
As I said before,
Power of Faerûn, being focused on higher-level play, isn't really my cup of tea, but I have to give the authors credit for having covered the material well. There are separate chapters devoted to different styles of play, from political intrigue to military campaigns to the expansion of a religious faith. Each chapter builds upon existing material - like the Leadership feat - and expands upon it in a logical direction - even if it means tweaking the existing rules a bit, like it does when it drops the "maximum Leadership score of 25 without the Epic Leadership feat" (from the
Epic Level Handbook) rule. This does bring me to a possible source of irritation, though: unlike previous sourcebooks, which each assumed that the reader only had access to the three D&D core rulebooks (
Player's Handbook,
Dungeon Master's Guide, and
Monster Manual),
Power of Faerûn also requires the
Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide (not surprisingly, and no points taken off for doing so) but also
Heroes of Battle (without which Chapter Two is of somewhat limited use),
Dungeon Master's Guide II (which has rules that Chapter Four relies upon), and the
Epic Level Handbook (without which you won't be able to understand some of the NPC stats, which have epic feats and other epic material not contained in the book. In addition, the NPC stats draw from a whole slew of different sourcebooks, and while there's nothing wrong with that (it seems like they described all of the relevant abilities in the stats, so you have what you need to use the NPCs as written), it did make it much harder for me to do my standard "statblock checkup."
As far as the statblocks go, there were only 10 of them in the whole book, but due to the frequent use of prestige classes from books I don't have (
Heroes of Battle,
Lost Empires of Faerûn,
Complete Divine, and
Epic Level Handbook), my "unofficial errata" section isn't going to be as complete as it might be. I went ahead and compiled what I could, and pointed out things that seem wrong but I can't check up on; I'm hoping that those with access to the relevant books might help "fill in the blanks" for me, besides pointing out any errors I might have made on my own. With that in mind, here's my list of recommended changes:
- p. 42, Sothillis, male elite ogre mage sorcerer 12/legendary leader 5: AC should be 22, not 23 (-1 size, +5 natural, +8 +4 mithral shirt). Ditto with his flat-footed AC.
- pp. 59-60, Sunlord Daelegoth Orndair, male elite fire genasi cleric 10/sunmaster 10/evangelist 5: Initiative should be +8, not +3 (+4 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative). AC should be 24, not 20 (+3 maximum Dex while wearing a breastplate, +7 +2 breastplate of command, +4 +2 blinding mithral heavy shield). Touch AC should be 13, not 9. Flat-footed AC should be 21, not 20. I don't think his "Ref +7" is correct, since he gets +3 as a Clr10 and +4 from Dex; that's +7 right there - surely 10 levels of sunmaster (from Lost Empires of Faerûn) and 5 levels of evangelist (from Complete Divine) should grant some extra Reflex bonuses? (Even if both prestige classes provide poor Reflex saves, that would be +3 and +1, respectively, bring the Sunlord's total up to +11.)
- pp. 99-100, Erthaer Javilarhhsson, male ghost (augmented elite Illuskan human) ranger 13/dread commando 5: His "Senses" line reads "Spot +23, Listen +23" but under "Skills" they're both listed at +31.
- pp. 121-122, Imvaernarho, male red great wyrm, advanced: Will save against his frightful presence should be DC 51, not DC 41 (10 + 1/2 HD + Cha bonus = 10 + 30 + 11).
- pp. 124-125, Mhair Gulzabban, male Calishite human wizard 15: Melee touch attacks for the spells shocking grasp and vampiric touch should be +5 melee touch, not +10 (+7 BAB, -2 Str); they're not ranged touch attacks, where the +10 touch attack would be correct.
- p. 125, Sharaera Duthtue, female moon elf wizard 12: The save DCs given for her spells are all one point too high; they should be at DC 14 + spell level, but they're all listed as if they're DC 15 + spell level. "Immune" line should include "oil of taggit poison" since all five of the Company of the Cloak have built up an immunity over the past few years. Also, her "Combat Gear" line should include the 2 potions of cure serious wounds listed under "Possessions."
- p. 126, Horlo Aumrabbar, male Tashalan cleric 13 of Mask: Should have 3+1 6th-level spells prepared, not 2+1 (2+1 as a Clr13, +1 bonus spell for having Wis 22), and 4+1 5th-level spells, not 3+1 (3+1 as a Clr13, +1 bonus spell for having Wis 22). Turn undead should be "(5/day, +4, 2d6+15)," not "(5/day, +5, 2d6+15)" - he has a +2 Cha bonus, and gains +2 for having 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (religion).
- p. 127, Omskilar Rethwood, male Tethyrian human fighter 14: Grapple attacks should be at +19, not +16 (+14 BAB, +5 Str).
I guess this shows that even a developer as strong as Mike Mearls can have an off day, or else that the higher-level stats just get so complex that it's hard to get everything correct. Still, since there were problems with 8 out of 10 statblocks, I can't say this was the best job I've ever seen in a Wizards of the Coast book.
Fortunately, since the stats play such a small role in the overall book, I won't be skewing my final review score much in their direction. While I probably won't use very much of the material from
Power of Faerûn in my own campaign, there was some pretty good material in here, if your campaigns tend to lean towards the directions provided (political, religious, trade, military campaigns, etc.), and most of the material here is pilferable for non-
Forgotten Realms campaigns. However, there is one last thing I wanted to get off my chest: I absolutely
hate the court herald prestige class from Chapter Six! It's bad enough that there's no table given detailing the Base Attack Bonus, Saving Throw Bonuses, and Special Abilities per class level (I suppose it's because the court herald is a "variant" of the loremaster, and they figured you could just reference the loremaster table on page 191 of the
DMG, but that's kind of a cop-out since there are only 10 levels of loremaster but 12 levels of court herald), but I don't even like the concept behind the class. Court heralds are heraldry experts that travel across the various kingdoms, checking up on the banners and emblems used on each kingdom's shields, uniforms, etc. to make sure they're within the written rules of heraldry. They can show up and chew out a king because his shield has a black boar's head on a red oval, which is too similar to the black-boar's-head-on-an-orange-circle used 14 kingdoms over. Worse yet, the king is supposed to do whatever the court herald says, because if he doesn't, he'll be blackballed by the Order of Heralds, and no other kingdom will want to do business with him ever again. Maybe it's just me (channeling my inner barbarian?), but if I were a king and some poncy herald showed up and told me I had to remove the crossed axes underneath the dragon skull on my kingdom's battle-emblem because according to the "rules of heraldry" I hadn't sufficiently earned them yet, and that he was fining me 1,000 gp for my transgression, I'd have his head on a platter faster than you could say "Faerûnian nonsense." (Still, I do rather like the "mindsee" special ability that court heralds gain at 2nd level, where they can take a number of "mental snapshots" based on their class level - that's an ability I wouldn't mind in real life!)
Power of Faerûn is a decent book for those looking for different things to do with their high-level campaigns besides the standard "hack-and-slash" (not that there's anything wrong with "hack-and-slash" and dungeon-crawling; personally, I rather like them!), but it requires too many other books to use for my taste, has the rather goofy court herald, suffers from sub par (for Wizards) proofreading and poor stat blocks. I'm going to go with a mediocre "3 (Average)," but for those specifically looking for high-level alternates to dungeon-crawling this might well be a "4."
