[Review] Skreyn's Register: The Bonds of Magic - Cabal

[Paladin]

Two thumbs WAY up!

Great combination of history, personality, tactics and suggested uses with each NPC. Lots of cool new magic items and spells too, not to mention a new feat for PCs that prepare spells. Sean also incorporates some material from the BoEM 1 & 2 as well.

 

[RangerWickett]

Will you write a detailed review? Including at least a synopsis of each of the characters (there's only 25, right?). I'm just talking class/race/level, to see how big the variety is.

Are there any new crunchy bits, or just the characters? A book with just characters would be cool and refreshing.

 

[Paladin]

Will you write a detailed review? Including at least a synopsis of each of the characters (there's only 25, right?). I'm just talking class/race/level, to see how big the variety is.

Are there any new crunchy bits, or just the characters? A book with just characters would be cool and refreshing.

Sure. That's almost no work at all. I will.

What he's done is create the NPCs, flesh them out, and provided a new magic item, spell or feat that makes each of them have a unique quality.

 

[Paladin]

Here's the race/class/level synopsis:

Dark elf / Sor 7
Orc / Sor 5
Dark elf / Enc 10
Halfling / Tra 7
Gnome / Sor 10
Half-dragon (red) human / Sor 6
Human / Abj 7
Half fiend human / Sor 10
Human / Sor 11
Human lich / Sor 11
Kobold / Sor 3
Bugbear / Tra 5
Dwarf / Sor 9
Dwarf / Div 5
Human / Cjr 8
Half-elf fleshbound vampire / Sor 6
Elf / Sor 6
Half-medusa human / Sor 5
Human lich / Wiz 12
Gnome / Ill 8
Half-orc / Nec 3
Orc / Evo 9
Human / Tra 11
Elf / Brd 8
Human fleshbound vampire / Cjr 9

The art is really good too, btw.

(Sean or Monte - If it isn't cool to post this, let me know and I'll delete it.)

 

[gariig]

Don't forget the OGL in your post

Gonna pick this up sometime, but I'm strapped for cash

Gariig

 

[Krug]

Paladin, hope you can do a review for this.

There's a preview here btw.
http://www.montecook.com/mpress_Cabal_preview.html

 

[Bagpuss]

I am very happy with my purchase. This is actually just the sort of thing suited to PDF publishing as no GM is likely to use a whole book of NPC's all at once. As each NPC is on one sheet of paper you can scan through and just print of the one your going to use for that session or adventure.

Sourcebooks where you use whole chunks arn't as useful as PDF's I've found, you end up printing the whole lot out. This book you can easily just print out the bit(s) you need.

There is some crunchy bits the last 5 pages are one new feat, about a page and a half on new magic items, and the rest new spells. My only complaint here is that the magic items seem to all blend into one as the name of the item doesn't standout from the text around it very well (it only made bold with doesn't show up well on the screen).

Looking forward to the second in the series.

I have only noticed one error so far, but its very minor.

Jaurdaan

AC 21 (touch 12, flat-footed 21)

Yet the Dex is 12 so a plus one AC bonus (which appears to be included to get to AC21). Wouldn't that mean flat-footed would be 20?