JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Relics & Rituals Olympus does for Greek myth what Relics & Rituals Excalibur did for knights. It takes many of the myths and common ideas we have of that era and turns them into game mechanics for your standard d20 fantasy campaign.
Weighing in at 208 black and white pages in a hardcover format for $34.95, Olympus is average in price range. Interior covers show the races of the setting. One page is used for the legal appendix and another for the open game license. One page is used for an ad for the new Vampire game. The book has no index, but does have a table of contents with a fair breakdown.
The book is written by W. Jason Peck, Aaron Rosenberg, and Christiana Stiles with interior artists including John Bridges, Talon Dunning, Jeff Holt, Leif Jones and Alex Sheikman. Layout is standard two column format. Chapters start with a greek warrior, chapter title, and chapter name. For example, the Appendix is listed as Olympian Monsters. This information is also found at the top of the page for ease of reference. Chapter pages are light gray to offset them from standard pages and have no border. Other pages are boardered by Greek armies in battle.
Now for those looking for a historical book on Greeks including their mythology broken up into game terms, you’re looking at the wrong book. This is a book that takes some of the basic assumptions of “Hellenic Fantasy” and puts them into d20 terms. You’ll find no cities here. No maps. No NPCs. No timeline. These are things that don’t apply to this type of book.
Instead, you’ll find “Hellenic Fantasy” versions of the standard races. For example, instead of elves, half-orcs and gnomes, we have the Selenaous or sea elves, the Therian or Wild Elves, and gnomes and half-orcs with details on how they fit into these setting with game stats similar to their standard versons. For example, the half-orc here has the same bonus to strength and penalties to intelligence and charisma that the standard one does as well as his orc blood for magic item use.
Thankfully, we have something to help this section stand out. We have fauns, humanoids that aren’t quite fey, but are close to it. They are half-human and half-goat with great charisma but poor wisdom. Like many humanoids they have low-light vision as well as some miscellaneous bonuses, in this case, +2 against enchanment spells and +4 against disease as well as a bonus to some skill checks and a few other benefits.
My favorite though, is the warlike spartes. These individuals hail from the teeth of a dragon’s skull and were breed for war. They have minor stat modifications coming in a bonus for constitution and a penalty for wisdom, with standard low light vision and a bonus to their saves against fear. One thing I don’t like about the class is that they have a favored class of fighter, and received several weapon proficiencies. It’s nice if you decide not to follow your favored class and wasted if you do. Still, there is something appealing in a race that has a reduced penalty when fatigued or exhausted, a race that recovers from those states quicker than a standard human. Makes modeling the old Spartan warriors a little easier.
Talon does a nice job of illustrating this section. He provides illustrations of the different races in different poses for both male and female members.
For classes, the book examines the existing core classes and how they fit into the campaign. This includes who might’ve been what class, such as Orpheus being a model bard, as well as what role each class has in the setting. Fighters for example, are almost always needed and this setting is no different as it notes, “The role of the fighter in the Grecian heroic epic is unquestioned.” A nice touch was the prestige classes from the DMG, discussing which ones were appropriate and which ones should be booted.
The part of the book that I hated, were the PrCs. I always try to mention how a book has to visually pull me in. Good art and layout do that as well as modest use of white space. The PrCs here are poorly illustrated. This is especially sad when one looks at the previous book in the series and looks at Ron Spencer’s artwork. Here, the art is huge and it’s just not good, taking up way too much space. What’s worse is that despite this huge inappropriate art, there’s a ton of white space.
The good news is that the PrCs cover a wide range of options native to the Grecian menu. These PrCs start off with background details and move into game mechanics. Each one fully illustrated and includes advancement table. These classes range from individuals like the Anointed of Styx, warriors who are anointed in the River Styx, gaining damage reduction and great health, to the Sun-Chosen, divine spellcasters who are masters of the bow and of light itself. These are full ten level PrCs.
Now in this mix, I find myself eyeing two of the PrCs. The Anointed is a good one as it represents an ancient myth of vitality and power. The Promethean Magos on the other hand, is a master of hidden knowledge, a spellcaster that seeks to know ever more. They might be a little too good as they get full spellcasting as they advance, as well as special abilities every level. Thankfully, there are limits to the class.
See, the Magos has a special Sacred Fire and if they’re not within it, they lose their special class abilities, leaving htem with just their spellcasting power. In exchange for that though, they gain bonus skills to their class list, knowledge skill checks with five ranks value, insight bonus to skill or ability checks, bonus to Will saving throws, and other abilities hailing from the “Sum of”. Titles.
The other PrCs aren’t necessarily bad, they just didn’t grab me. Some might be interested in the Sacred Huntress, the devoted archers of Artemis. Others might want to test their physical prowess as Olympic Paragons and a few might want to break bones in wrestling as the Master Pankratiast. To me, they just seemed almost too specialized or too focused, something you’d have to be interested in or have lots of rules to use. For example, maps of arenas perhaps?
Outside of races and classes, Chapter Three includes information for skills, feats, and equipment. Skills don’t work differently here, but there are different types of knowledge and profession skills. The skill of Charioteer is also added to the list included a list of tasks and DC’s necessary to make them and what those tasks mean. For example, using the chariot for cover, or spurring the steeds on to greater movement.
In terms of feats, the book reminds users that since this is a bronze age setting, certain feats aren’t appropriate. It also notes which feats aren’t in the style, either being too Asian, like Deflect and Snatch Arrows, or out of place, like Two-Weapon Fighting and it’s chain of feats. In terms of new utility, the book introduces the Olympian Feat. Here, you champion a deities cause and gain benefits from the feat. Fail, and you suffer a Punishment Feat until you’ve redeemed yourself.
These feats cover twelve gods of Olympus and start with the Favor of. For example, Favor of Hades allows you to see in darkness and have a few special abilities like use a death touch, speak with dead, and add +8 to any one Appraise check. Included are details of what happens when you manifest your Favor. For example, a Favor of Hera has the user become dark and terrible with electricity flickering in their eyes while winds whip about hair and clothing.
I was a little disappointed to see more wasn’t done with the Divine Blood feat. We have several benefits, depending on whose blood you have, but no follow up. No Greater Divine Blood. Now I know that our Greek God of Strength had to have a little more than just this feat for as the scion of Zeus, he’d only have a 3 resistance to electricity and sonic attacks.
The equipment section does a nice job of handling the bronze age. They convert things for us so that a copper piece is now a Bit and a Gold piece is a Drachma, Stater or Mina. It’s a good idea. They even include different values for trade goods, as well as a listing of appropriate weapons and armor.
For those wondering how magic works in this setting, Chapter Four, Spells, covers that a bit. It doesn’t provide any new systems mind you, just discusses how the various types, arcane and divine, are perceived in the world, as well as how the schools of arcane magic, are known. It then provides a recommended spell list with inappropriate spells marked in italics. This allows the GM to pretty much pick and choose what he wants his characters to have, even as the company dodges all responsibility for making a choice and sticking with it. That’s right, expect to see the gold old spells like Fireball and Vampiric Touch in a Greece no one imagined.
In terms of new magic, we have several new cleric domains. Each domain has the appropriate deity, granted power, and domain list spells. These include obvious ones like Archery for Apollo and Artemis, and appropriate ones like Underworld for Hades and Wine for Dionysus. The nice thing is that the spells are broken up by class, then level, and in the case of wizards, by school. This allows you to quickly scan the list and see what the spell does and then look up the spell itself for further clarification.
Most of these spells aren’t flashy. For example, Aid of the Wind, when an ally is carrying a ranged weapon, allows that ranged weapon to have double reach. Others, while not damaging like a fireball, are quite powerful. Take Divine Interference, a 7th level cleric spell that grants the target 10+ your level spell resistance against divine spells of gods other than your own. The wide range of spells provide a nice flavor for the setting, but because of the nature of D&D, most players are going to go for the ones that will be the most useful to them. Now a clever GM can easily use that against the players as many of these spells work well in many other campaign types but that goes against the grain of the party to punish them.
For those looking to augment themselves further with magic items, the book has you covered. This includes Lion-pelt Armor, a +1 hide armor that includes lower legs that are made into greaves to allow the user a bonus of +1 to hit and damage to the Horsemaster’s Ring, a gold band that provides a +8 bonus to several skill checks. Not everything is beneficial though as we have several cursed items like the Brooch of Divine Arrogance that makes its user immune to fear but makes him into an annoying ego.
One thing I enjoyed about this section is the material on artifacts. This includes the Aegis, the shield of Zeus with the face of the Medusa on it, as well as the Armor of Achilles and the Golden Fleece. Personally, I could see a whole chapter devoted to these items, but instead, I‘ll settle with the Thunderbolts of Zeus and the Winged Sandals of Hermes with the other goodies.
Now how do you use all this material? Well, there is a chapter on Campaigns. It provides ideas on how to use it. This includes terrain types common to the era and location, information on city-states, including their origin and what they organize about, cosmology, heroism, and other useful tidbits like Olympic Games.
Sometimes these details come with mini-systems to handle them. Like Heroism. In a Grecian campaign, you don’t want to attract the attention of the gods for being too good as it often results in punishment. To handle that, they have hubris. You gain hubris when succeeding in difficult tasks or for doing things that should be avoided, like comparing yourself to the gods or siding with one god against another. Each time you get a point, the GM gets to roll % dice and if he matches your HR rating, you get punished. The higher your HR when the roll is made, the worse the punishment.
One thing that’s different is that the follows of the gods can gain special abilities if they give up any granted domain powers. For example, those who follow Apollo have Perform as a class skill and get a bonus to either Heal checks or attack rolls when using a bow. The write ups for the gods here don’t follow the WoTC version with game stats, but rather, have background details, alignment, domains, favored weapon, and special ability.
In terms of monsters, the book mentions how they work in this campaign. This ranges from a few words like how Griffins are well known, to the origin of Hags, fallen nymphs.
For those worried about their character’s lives in a bronze age setting, they have an optional defense bonus. It provides a bonus based on level, and based on how good your base attack bonus is. Once again, this puts fighters and barbarians at the top of the mountain while clerics, rogues, monks, and the poor wizard strive to keep up.
Now due to the nature of many of the myths, the Monster Manual turns many unique creatures into members of a race. This book provides several more monsters as well as many unique creatures. For example, he have Cerberus, the unique three headed hound of Hades. However, we also have a generic, much less powerful version of Cerberus. This is great for those who’d like some examples of near epic monsters like the Medusa or just inspired by myth, like the Nemean Lions.
The book brings almost all things that you need to run an Olympus flavored game to life. However, unlike Excalibur, the time period here is much further removed from the baseline of standard D&D, which one could almost argue is Dark Ages in many places. Without the benefit of something like a campaign example or checklist, without benefit of predrawn maps, even example city states, the utility is a little less than that of Excalibur.
Having said that, if you’d like to run a standard D20 fantasy campaign with lots of elements of Olympus in your campaign, this is an excellent resource.
Weighing in at 208 black and white pages in a hardcover format for $34.95, Olympus is average in price range. Interior covers show the races of the setting. One page is used for the legal appendix and another for the open game license. One page is used for an ad for the new Vampire game. The book has no index, but does have a table of contents with a fair breakdown.
The book is written by W. Jason Peck, Aaron Rosenberg, and Christiana Stiles with interior artists including John Bridges, Talon Dunning, Jeff Holt, Leif Jones and Alex Sheikman. Layout is standard two column format. Chapters start with a greek warrior, chapter title, and chapter name. For example, the Appendix is listed as Olympian Monsters. This information is also found at the top of the page for ease of reference. Chapter pages are light gray to offset them from standard pages and have no border. Other pages are boardered by Greek armies in battle.
Now for those looking for a historical book on Greeks including their mythology broken up into game terms, you’re looking at the wrong book. This is a book that takes some of the basic assumptions of “Hellenic Fantasy” and puts them into d20 terms. You’ll find no cities here. No maps. No NPCs. No timeline. These are things that don’t apply to this type of book.
Instead, you’ll find “Hellenic Fantasy” versions of the standard races. For example, instead of elves, half-orcs and gnomes, we have the Selenaous or sea elves, the Therian or Wild Elves, and gnomes and half-orcs with details on how they fit into these setting with game stats similar to their standard versons. For example, the half-orc here has the same bonus to strength and penalties to intelligence and charisma that the standard one does as well as his orc blood for magic item use.
Thankfully, we have something to help this section stand out. We have fauns, humanoids that aren’t quite fey, but are close to it. They are half-human and half-goat with great charisma but poor wisdom. Like many humanoids they have low-light vision as well as some miscellaneous bonuses, in this case, +2 against enchanment spells and +4 against disease as well as a bonus to some skill checks and a few other benefits.
My favorite though, is the warlike spartes. These individuals hail from the teeth of a dragon’s skull and were breed for war. They have minor stat modifications coming in a bonus for constitution and a penalty for wisdom, with standard low light vision and a bonus to their saves against fear. One thing I don’t like about the class is that they have a favored class of fighter, and received several weapon proficiencies. It’s nice if you decide not to follow your favored class and wasted if you do. Still, there is something appealing in a race that has a reduced penalty when fatigued or exhausted, a race that recovers from those states quicker than a standard human. Makes modeling the old Spartan warriors a little easier.
Talon does a nice job of illustrating this section. He provides illustrations of the different races in different poses for both male and female members.
For classes, the book examines the existing core classes and how they fit into the campaign. This includes who might’ve been what class, such as Orpheus being a model bard, as well as what role each class has in the setting. Fighters for example, are almost always needed and this setting is no different as it notes, “The role of the fighter in the Grecian heroic epic is unquestioned.” A nice touch was the prestige classes from the DMG, discussing which ones were appropriate and which ones should be booted.
The part of the book that I hated, were the PrCs. I always try to mention how a book has to visually pull me in. Good art and layout do that as well as modest use of white space. The PrCs here are poorly illustrated. This is especially sad when one looks at the previous book in the series and looks at Ron Spencer’s artwork. Here, the art is huge and it’s just not good, taking up way too much space. What’s worse is that despite this huge inappropriate art, there’s a ton of white space.
The good news is that the PrCs cover a wide range of options native to the Grecian menu. These PrCs start off with background details and move into game mechanics. Each one fully illustrated and includes advancement table. These classes range from individuals like the Anointed of Styx, warriors who are anointed in the River Styx, gaining damage reduction and great health, to the Sun-Chosen, divine spellcasters who are masters of the bow and of light itself. These are full ten level PrCs.
Now in this mix, I find myself eyeing two of the PrCs. The Anointed is a good one as it represents an ancient myth of vitality and power. The Promethean Magos on the other hand, is a master of hidden knowledge, a spellcaster that seeks to know ever more. They might be a little too good as they get full spellcasting as they advance, as well as special abilities every level. Thankfully, there are limits to the class.
See, the Magos has a special Sacred Fire and if they’re not within it, they lose their special class abilities, leaving htem with just their spellcasting power. In exchange for that though, they gain bonus skills to their class list, knowledge skill checks with five ranks value, insight bonus to skill or ability checks, bonus to Will saving throws, and other abilities hailing from the “Sum of”. Titles.
The other PrCs aren’t necessarily bad, they just didn’t grab me. Some might be interested in the Sacred Huntress, the devoted archers of Artemis. Others might want to test their physical prowess as Olympic Paragons and a few might want to break bones in wrestling as the Master Pankratiast. To me, they just seemed almost too specialized or too focused, something you’d have to be interested in or have lots of rules to use. For example, maps of arenas perhaps?
Outside of races and classes, Chapter Three includes information for skills, feats, and equipment. Skills don’t work differently here, but there are different types of knowledge and profession skills. The skill of Charioteer is also added to the list included a list of tasks and DC’s necessary to make them and what those tasks mean. For example, using the chariot for cover, or spurring the steeds on to greater movement.
In terms of feats, the book reminds users that since this is a bronze age setting, certain feats aren’t appropriate. It also notes which feats aren’t in the style, either being too Asian, like Deflect and Snatch Arrows, or out of place, like Two-Weapon Fighting and it’s chain of feats. In terms of new utility, the book introduces the Olympian Feat. Here, you champion a deities cause and gain benefits from the feat. Fail, and you suffer a Punishment Feat until you’ve redeemed yourself.
These feats cover twelve gods of Olympus and start with the Favor of. For example, Favor of Hades allows you to see in darkness and have a few special abilities like use a death touch, speak with dead, and add +8 to any one Appraise check. Included are details of what happens when you manifest your Favor. For example, a Favor of Hera has the user become dark and terrible with electricity flickering in their eyes while winds whip about hair and clothing.
I was a little disappointed to see more wasn’t done with the Divine Blood feat. We have several benefits, depending on whose blood you have, but no follow up. No Greater Divine Blood. Now I know that our Greek God of Strength had to have a little more than just this feat for as the scion of Zeus, he’d only have a 3 resistance to electricity and sonic attacks.
The equipment section does a nice job of handling the bronze age. They convert things for us so that a copper piece is now a Bit and a Gold piece is a Drachma, Stater or Mina. It’s a good idea. They even include different values for trade goods, as well as a listing of appropriate weapons and armor.
For those wondering how magic works in this setting, Chapter Four, Spells, covers that a bit. It doesn’t provide any new systems mind you, just discusses how the various types, arcane and divine, are perceived in the world, as well as how the schools of arcane magic, are known. It then provides a recommended spell list with inappropriate spells marked in italics. This allows the GM to pretty much pick and choose what he wants his characters to have, even as the company dodges all responsibility for making a choice and sticking with it. That’s right, expect to see the gold old spells like Fireball and Vampiric Touch in a Greece no one imagined.
In terms of new magic, we have several new cleric domains. Each domain has the appropriate deity, granted power, and domain list spells. These include obvious ones like Archery for Apollo and Artemis, and appropriate ones like Underworld for Hades and Wine for Dionysus. The nice thing is that the spells are broken up by class, then level, and in the case of wizards, by school. This allows you to quickly scan the list and see what the spell does and then look up the spell itself for further clarification.
Most of these spells aren’t flashy. For example, Aid of the Wind, when an ally is carrying a ranged weapon, allows that ranged weapon to have double reach. Others, while not damaging like a fireball, are quite powerful. Take Divine Interference, a 7th level cleric spell that grants the target 10+ your level spell resistance against divine spells of gods other than your own. The wide range of spells provide a nice flavor for the setting, but because of the nature of D&D, most players are going to go for the ones that will be the most useful to them. Now a clever GM can easily use that against the players as many of these spells work well in many other campaign types but that goes against the grain of the party to punish them.
For those looking to augment themselves further with magic items, the book has you covered. This includes Lion-pelt Armor, a +1 hide armor that includes lower legs that are made into greaves to allow the user a bonus of +1 to hit and damage to the Horsemaster’s Ring, a gold band that provides a +8 bonus to several skill checks. Not everything is beneficial though as we have several cursed items like the Brooch of Divine Arrogance that makes its user immune to fear but makes him into an annoying ego.
One thing I enjoyed about this section is the material on artifacts. This includes the Aegis, the shield of Zeus with the face of the Medusa on it, as well as the Armor of Achilles and the Golden Fleece. Personally, I could see a whole chapter devoted to these items, but instead, I‘ll settle with the Thunderbolts of Zeus and the Winged Sandals of Hermes with the other goodies.
Now how do you use all this material? Well, there is a chapter on Campaigns. It provides ideas on how to use it. This includes terrain types common to the era and location, information on city-states, including their origin and what they organize about, cosmology, heroism, and other useful tidbits like Olympic Games.
Sometimes these details come with mini-systems to handle them. Like Heroism. In a Grecian campaign, you don’t want to attract the attention of the gods for being too good as it often results in punishment. To handle that, they have hubris. You gain hubris when succeeding in difficult tasks or for doing things that should be avoided, like comparing yourself to the gods or siding with one god against another. Each time you get a point, the GM gets to roll % dice and if he matches your HR rating, you get punished. The higher your HR when the roll is made, the worse the punishment.
One thing that’s different is that the follows of the gods can gain special abilities if they give up any granted domain powers. For example, those who follow Apollo have Perform as a class skill and get a bonus to either Heal checks or attack rolls when using a bow. The write ups for the gods here don’t follow the WoTC version with game stats, but rather, have background details, alignment, domains, favored weapon, and special ability.
In terms of monsters, the book mentions how they work in this campaign. This ranges from a few words like how Griffins are well known, to the origin of Hags, fallen nymphs.
For those worried about their character’s lives in a bronze age setting, they have an optional defense bonus. It provides a bonus based on level, and based on how good your base attack bonus is. Once again, this puts fighters and barbarians at the top of the mountain while clerics, rogues, monks, and the poor wizard strive to keep up.
Now due to the nature of many of the myths, the Monster Manual turns many unique creatures into members of a race. This book provides several more monsters as well as many unique creatures. For example, he have Cerberus, the unique three headed hound of Hades. However, we also have a generic, much less powerful version of Cerberus. This is great for those who’d like some examples of near epic monsters like the Medusa or just inspired by myth, like the Nemean Lions.
The book brings almost all things that you need to run an Olympus flavored game to life. However, unlike Excalibur, the time period here is much further removed from the baseline of standard D&D, which one could almost argue is Dark Ages in many places. Without the benefit of something like a campaign example or checklist, without benefit of predrawn maps, even example city states, the utility is a little less than that of Excalibur.
Having said that, if you’d like to run a standard D20 fantasy campaign with lots of elements of Olympus in your campaign, this is an excellent resource.
