Primeval Groves

[Crothian]

The bounty of life surrounds us all, yet most of you will never see the true beauty and horror that the mother earth has given to us.

From the usefulness of the goodberry plant and the gub nut to the seething hatred running through the sap of the pine brethren, mother earth can be a most temperamental bed fellow.

Traveling from the deepest darkest woodlands and across the most treacherous of seas, I have journeyed with my companion, young Matron Grubb, so as to enlighten and warn you all with a selection of shoots, roots and legumes to behold, befuddle and ... b e w a r e

-- From the Journals of Gubin Turnipheed

This tome, the third in a series of guidebooks by the legendary Wanderers Guild, is a collection of essays and expositions by the renowned Gubbin Turnipheed. Gubbin has noted his findings from years of exploration across the known (and unknown) lands, with his companion Matron Grubb etching what he finds in his own special style. Here you will find detailed narrative and remarkable depictions of the creatures, races, herbs, useful plants, peoples and gods that Gubbin has encountered on his travels.

Matron's etchings have been converted to a more distinguished style by Guild Illuminator Scott Purdy, while Gubin's original manuscripts are translated by master scribe Andrew Troman. They have brought together this d20 system sourcebook to ensure that those traveling across the wilds are equipped with the knowledge that not all that is green is edible. Some of it may well be doing the eating...

Features:

* 21 imaginative new plant creatures, all superbly illustrated in the Wanderers Guild style
* Descriptions of dozens of fantastic plants and herbs, both useful and deadly
* Fascinating illumination of the wildlands and the people who live there, including:
o Extensive new rules for druidic grove magic and plant familiars
o New plant-based races like the green gnomes and mulchmen
o A new core class, the Hinterlander -- a wilderness survivalist
o New prestige classes for rangers and druids, like the Boskite Explorer and Xylomancer
o Plant-based deities, domains, and spells
* Like all Wanderers Guild books, Primeval Groves features a beautiful presentation system with notations indicating each creature's diet, habitat, and sleeping habits
* Interactive, community-based online support via the Wanderers Guild web site, complete with fan-submitted entries

Writer: Andy Troman
Artist: Scott Purdy
Graphic Designer: Andy Hopp

GMG4002. 128 pages. $22.00.

 

[DMH]

Primeval Groves is the one stop for all kinds of plants

Primeval Groves is a 96 (98 using the inside overs) page supplement on plants. Like all Wanderers Guild books, it starts off with a look at its fictional author, in this case Frondescent Salmagundi, a frolate prontal (I will get back to this race). There are no chapters so I will call the pages with similar material sections.

It then looks at plant ecology- classification (which includes fungi unfortunately) and relationships such as symbiosis.

The section that many players should be interested goes over useful, non-monster plants. Many are not typical herbalism plants, but rather ones useful for other needs. The dieooing vine is a fig like parasite that can be used as rope, the omp stems are used for writing and have their own ink, and the surfage weed reduces dazzling effects. There are 36 such plants described.

The next section are the monster plants, 20 in all. A sample include the briar golem, the dequalm (a parasite that controls its host), the juk (a slime covered fey like plant that converts animals and humanoids into more slime), the kint (a ball that bounces and engulfs prey), the olanth mezzalith (a two headed humanoid shaped plant that has two personalities- one good and the other evil), and the veegamoblis (a template that converts a living non-plant into a plant, it is an infection).

The next two sections look at classes and a deeper look at druidic groves. The former is roleplaying suggestions and the latter involves magical effects the groves may have. Grove gifts involve spending xp to effectively cast another, specific spell such as entangle within the grove. Also there are druid rituals.

Next are the green races. They are the burgeonliese (mushroom people), frolate prontal (green gnomes- yup plants that look like gnomes) and the mutarmarl (mulch men who can change their shape and affect their size, ability scores and AC from day to day).

1 class- the hinterlander (survialist fighter class), and 2 PrCs- the boskite explorer (divine class that studies plants) and the xylomancer (arcane caster that studies plants, but does not warp or control them).

Spells and power components round out the last two sections. There are 30 spells that run from first to eight level and the most powerful is compost cocoon (which turns a target into soil over time). Most are utility spells. The power components look at the value of plant parts to increase the use of certain spells. Olanth mezzalith brains can be used to improve awaken and a treat branch increases the duration of changestaff and gives the result the ability to speak to treants.

And now for the controversy. It turns out that a draft of the book was printed instead of the final product. It has many editing errors, mostly duplicated sentence fragments and grammatical errors. The worst is the chart for the xylomancer is replaced by that of the boskite explorer. Several sections have few, if any errors (like the spells and useful plants).

Goodman has put out errata that fixes all of this. It is annoying, but it definately does not make the book useless. In fact I find it more interesting and useful than Creatures of the Endless Dark. And thus I give it a 4. Without the errata, I would have given it a 3.