Savage Species: Playing Monstrous Heroes

[IronWolf]

This title contains detailed information on constructing playable characters from D&D monster races. All the material in this rulebook is completely new, including rules, spells, classes and magical items. There is also information for both players and DMs, including how to integrate the material into an existing campaign.

 

[GameWyrd]

Too much filler and not enough killer; Savage Species is in trouble. What’s the point of the book? It’s there to let you use monstrous races as player character races. Actually, the blurb notes that the supplement "provides everything you need to play a monster as a character or make the monsters your heroes fight even more formidable". The latter is certainly true. The two usual candidates of yet more feats and yet more prestige classes step forward to add more tooth and claw to your monsters. There are templates too. The difference between a template and a monstrous prestige class is that the prestige class progresses on a scale whereas the full effects of the template come into being straight away. There are better and cheaper ways to improve your monsters than paying US$29.95 for Savage Species. What about monsters as player characters? There are two key elements to this and depending on your own roleplaying style you’ll rate the importance of them differently. The supplement will need to get to grips with rollplaying and the roleplaying problems of playing a monster, it’ll need to help out with the game mechanics and help out with the game itself. After all, you’ve got this Ghoul PC, what the hell are you supposed to do with it? Just how overpowering is the need for flesh? Does a four armed Sahuagin need as long for its craft roles as a dwarf?

Savage Species tries to sort out the game mechanics. It’s not really interested in offering advice on how to roleplay a monstrous race or even on pointing out what makes a monstrous race different from a character race in the first place. As far as I’m concerned that’s not a good start but it’s not a fatal flaw. I’m not a crunch happy gamer but if the dice bits are slick and smooth then I’ll treasure that. The conversion from monster to player race isn’t slick and smooth; it’s awkward, cumbersome, full of grey areas and DM estimates. DM estimates are good. The ability to make good DM calls separates the pro from the newbie. Advice on DM estimates is something to encourage. I appreciate books that present rules as a set of options for a DM to gauge and use as they think best. I don’t appreciate, however, "DMs will really have to estimate for themselves" followed by a "but our estimates are the best and here they are" followed by a dozen pages of estimated mechanics for standard WotC creatures. I was also riled to read that if a monster hadn’t been included in these dozen or so pages then it’s undoubtedly going to be difficult to translate into a player race and undoubtedly going to slow the game down for everyone else. Right, because a Sea Hag PC (included in the lists) isn’t going to bring a bias to the game, a Succubus, Vrok, Mind Flayer or Silver Dragon aren’t going to do it either. Quite obviously a whole load of monstrous races are going to be awkward to fit into a campaign. An arbitrary comment about unknown creatures is just a waste of space.

Savage Species is a 224-paged book. The appendices start at page 152. The first appendix, which is the bulk of these pages, list sample monster classes – races converted into races. The second appendix is a huge compiled table of monsters that repeats everything with extra from the dozen pages of samples I’ve just whined about. The last appendix includes some new creatures – which aren’t new if you have Monster Manual 2 (or even the books, such as Deep Horizon, where they appeared before Monster Manual 2). See what I mean about the filler? There are rules for furries.

The monster classes are introduced in chapter three, which starts as early as page 25. The rules here are designed to let you play a monster as a class. It’s suggested that you might want to play a monster because it’s cool. These rules let you concentrate on the cool features (which I assume are special powers). Fair enough. I’d prefer unusual character choices to be made because they seem especially suited to the campaign, will provide interesting roleplaying opportunities, will enhance the plot, story line or even just offer something different but I shall not turn my nose up at "cool". Again it’s really up to the experience of a DM and her best estimates to sort these monster classes out. The book’s pointers are a good enough way to going as any other.

Then there are feats. Yawn. Even today there are still new and worthwhile feats being published; psionic feats, for example, underwater or aerial feats are still fairly thin on the ground. These monstrous feats don’t really capitalise on their rarity; there’s too few in the style of "Prehensile Tail" which really must be a monstrous feat and too much in the way of "Quick Dive" or "Desert Dweller" could equally be applied to standard character races.

The equipment chapter is helpful because so many of the monstrous races shouldn’t be able to use standard equipment. The book modifiers a monstrous character race effective character level based on the special powers the creature has - not for how hard it’ll be for the character to find armour, use trappings, cast spells or make allies. For what it’s worth this chapter works, it does what you’ll want and comes up with equipment that it’ll interest non-humanoids.

A chapter of new spells is a typical inclusion for a d20 supplement and so you’ll find it here in Savage Species. The spells are designed to be those ones that’ll interest monsters most and in that respect they’re somewhere between the feats (not really successful) and the equipment (quite successful). I was expecting more Druid spells here but the class that benefits the most is Cleric. Spells like "Jagged Tooth" really is only helpful to spell casters with natural weapons but "Forestfold" which enhances move silently and hide checks or even "Girallon’s Blessing" which gives the caster an extra pair of arms could just as equally be cast be an elf. New spells don’t really make playing a monster as a character any easier but they do add more oomph to your current list of monstrous foes.

Prestige classes for monsters certainly make monsters tougher too. I suppose they’re useful if you’re including monster characters in a long campaign and want to keep those characters on roughly equal footing with the "normal" characters. In that case they’re helpful for game balance. The success of this chapter is to offer tips and suggestions on how to create your own prestige class and your own monster race prestige class. You’ll welcome this flexibility when you discover that very many of the sample prestige classes in Savage Species are really quite specific to one monster race. Illithid Savant is useless if you don’t have Mind Flayers in your game, Slaad Brooder’s are useless if you don’t have Slaads and so on. To be fair there’s about an equal number of prestige classes that could be applied to any race. Even here, though, there’s typically some catch; the Scaled Horror and Wave Rider both strongly favour a water-based scenario.

The Campaigns chapter is a bit of a lost fish. For some reason it’s placed between chapters on prestige classes and templates. It’s not much of a chapter either since it only has four pages to call its own. It’s this chapter that keeps Savage Species on the radar as far as I’m concerned. Here the DM will find the much-needed tips and tricks for –actually using monstrous races as characters- in their campaign. These few pages quickly look at problems with alignment and distinguishing between monsters and monstrous heroes.

There are rules near the start of the book for turning monster races into monster classes and near the end there are rules for advancing monsters as classes. It’s another tiny chapter and it’s mostly all overlap. There are short comments on finding an appropriate character class for a monster. In order to make monster encounters tougher there are such obvious suggestions as attacking the characters with groups of monsters, including a monster cleric (or other class), making the monsters bigger or using a template. Gosh. Would you have thought of that by yourself? A squadron of Drow backed up by a wizard? Thank goodness WotC are here to help out with suggestions like that.

Then there are templates. I like templates but too many of the ones in this book make me shudder. The "Feral" template applies to creatures that have shirked civilization and gone to live in the wild. The ability changes range from +4 to –2 and that’s ridiculous. Take FooFoo the inn daughter’s pampered puppy and toss poor FooFoo into the wild. If FooFoo survives as a feral dog she’ll be as strong as a small earth elemental, as tough as a Griffon and as wise as a Wraith. The "Incarnate" template applies to a construct that’s been given an actual life and living body. I think the "living body" change gets carried away with itself. A stone golem is still made of stone; it should have some damage reduction but not so under this template. The Incarnate template also removes all special attacks too and so I imagine acid golems won’t be acidic any longer. Pheh. Still, it’s not all bad. I quite like the "Multiheaded Creature" template and the "Tauric Creature" template too.

Chapter Eleven would confuse Nietzsche. "Becoming A Monster" is a chapter that works on the premise that after reading this book players will want to turn their characters into monsters. Ack! No! There should be a chapter that suggests players and DMs should try not to fall into the syndrome of using the latest toys in the most recent supplement just because they’re there. If there’s a real in character reason, a twist of plot, a planned game feature or, I suppose, for people who just don’t care if their games follow in the trail of WotC supplements then there a few pages of ways to turn characters into monstrous characters.

Savage Species isn’t an awful book; it’s just not a good book. It just about does what it needs to do; it gives you suggestions on how to convert the game mechanics of monster stats so they can be used as a playable race. Savage Species only gives you a tiny bit of roleplaying advice. I think Savage Species would have been better as a magazine article or a cheaper, smaller paperback because it doesn’t need over 240 pages and US$29.95 for "you’ll need to use your judgement" is just too much. There’s nothing in the book that puts it on gamers "must have" lists and there’s an awful lot that can be read once and then ignored ever after. There’s too much filler and not enough killer content.

* This review of Savage Species was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer, d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality Radio

Sizing Up the Target
Savage Species is a 222-page hard cover accessory published by Wizards of the Coast. Written by David Eckelberry, Rich Redman and Jennifer Clarke Wickes, the cover is by long-time favorite Jeff Easley and is done in the standard D&D 3rd edition format and features a Troll character, and interior art is by a handful of regular Wizard’s artists. Savage Species retails for $29.95.

First Blood
Savage Species is the latest of Wizards D&D Core book accessories and is designed to fit in with the version 3.5 Core Books due out this summer. This one does what players have been clamoring for and DMs dreaded, player character monsters. It does indeed follow the design of the other D&D core books in layout and design with the parchment colored chapter headers and the Divinci-like drawing to open them with.

The book opens with instructions on how to use a standard character record sheet and adapt any monster to it and how to assign levels to them. A diagramed sheet is illustrated and referenced to the text in the chapter. A sidebar shows the difference between Challenge Rating and Effective Character Level (ECL) and how the two are diametrically in opposition. But this short chapter is only one method of creating a monstrous character.

It is in the second chapter that the monstrous character is detailed in a more exhaustive manner. Monstrous races are divided into Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced races. Introductory being familiar humanoid races like Minotaurs and Kuo-Toa, Intermediate is defined by a more challenging level adjustment rating and include Ettins, Trolls and Half-Dragons. The advanced levels also show a more challenging adjustment to the monster like Celestials, Demons, Dragons, Giants and Undead, and then finishes with a sample character of a Bugbear.

Monster classes are the topic of the third chapter. It describes the structure of a monstrous class, the example in the book is that of a Grig, a monster with less than 1 hit die and how the class fulfills itself before reaching that 1 hit die mark. A sample Minotaur class is then given.

The subject of chapter four is monstrous feats. A new feature is the background feat, this is a feat based on climate or terrain. Monstrous feats enhance the basic capability like and extra breath weapon or resistance to poison. Most of these feats are geared to a monstrous character but there are some general feat that normal players could use like swamp stalker or vicious wound.

Chapter five deals in weapons and equipment for monsters. Bear in mind that if you can have a monstrous player character, you can also have a monstrous NON-player character and an astute DM can inflict some of these new items on their unsuspecting characters. Now as one would expect a lot of these are variations of existing weapons, armor and equipment, but others are adapted for use by creatures with multiple arms (Yuan-Ti) or unique physiology (Kyton) or similar differences. One such magical item would be Gloves of Man provide fingers and thumbs to monsters; which normally wouldn’t have them.

What would any Players Handbook be without new spells? This is what is listed in Chapter Six. First is a list of existing spells usable by monstrous characters, and then new spells are listed. Things like Awaken Undead that grants sentience to undead creatures or Fins to Feet that grants land movement to aquatic creatures..

And what I am finding to be bane of third edition product, Prestige Classes. While there is a definitive need here for them in the Seventh chapter. Emancipated Undead, Scaled Horror and Wave Rider are examples of some of the monstrous Prestige Classes listed here.

Chapter Eight addresses both players and DMs, how to run a monstrous campaign. This short chapter deals mostly with the ramifications of alignment on the campaign.

Chapter nine deals with character advancement, how to advance and gain feats and current feats that are applicable to monstrous characters.

Templates are dealt with in Chapter ten. Feral Creature, Ghost Brute, Multi-headed Creature are examples of new template here. These can also be applied to your new creations as well. Templates add to the challenge rating of monsters as well, so some of these can be very useful in beefing up some of your monsters and turning a typical encounter with, say, a stone golem, into something unique and even more challenging.

Chapter eleven talks about players turning into monsters, whether by accident or by design and the effects this can have on players and your game.

Several appendixes finish the book. The first deals with sample monster character classes. These run the gamut of the monstrous races listed in Chapter two. Appendix two compiles all the information you need to quickly reference to create a monstrous character.

Appendix three has the most intriguing part of the appendixes, a new race, the Official Half-Ogre, anthropomorphic animal templates and three new (to 3rd ed) monsters, the Desmodu, the Loxo and the Thri-Kreen.

Critical Hits
This book lives up to the usual Wizard’s standards. The artwork is topnotch as is the treatment of the subject. It is well laid out and deals, finally, with a subject that players (and some DMs) have been waiting for since first edition was first out. Monstrous characters, Gary Gygax when he first released the Rogue’s Gallery in late 1979 had a character that was transformed into a Lizard man and since then player have tormented Dms with wanting to play monstrous characters.

Critical Misses
When is Prestige mania going to end?? I grant you that the ones in this tome are necessary evils but with more than 1000 Prestige classes having been published since the release of the first 3rd edition books, it is getting a tad ridiculous. This is not to say that I don’t like some of them or use them, it’s just too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.

Coup de Grace
As I stated this a long desired book and it is one that is well done and very useful to both players and DMs. It brought a lot of new and very useful tools to the DM and some new ideas for the players to consider.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Vanuslux]

Savage Species is a book aimed at people who want to bring monstrous PCs into their game. I happen to fit nicely into its target audience, so I awaited this book with much anticipation, hope, and fear.

Appearances - Savage Species is a decent looking hardback book weighing in around 224 pages. There's not much art and it's pretty much run of the mill compared to the other WotC hardbacks. Which means it's better than most d20 products in terms of technical quality, but uninspired and generally boring.

Contents -

Chapter 1 - Character Creation: These four pages start things off about as bland as possible with a glossary of terms and a overview of the step-by-step process of creating a monstrous character. Short and I suppose necessary.

Chapter 2 - Monster Characters: This 16 page chapter gives the basic rules for making a monstrous character. There's a bunch of handy tables for the Hit Dice, Level Adjustments, Starting ECLs, and Skill Points for many of the monsters from the Monster Manual. Okay...not terribly useful since there's much better tables with this information and more in the appendix. Fortunately, the real point of this chapter is to give a good idea of how to come up with level adjustments for races that aren't already statted up neat and tidy for you in this book. While it's somewhat annoying that they didn't bother putting the level adjustment factors onto a table, the chapter does what it's supposed to do.

Chapter 3 - Monster Classes: Monster classes are basically a race broken down into a class, thus allowing such things as a 1st level wimp (well, compared to others of his race) of a minotaur. I can't help but wonder if there used to be something actually useful in this chapter that would warrant a chapter but then editing reduced it the these 4 pages. However, there is no method for creating new monster classes. It's mostly a bit of explaination of how to use the monster classes in the appendix.

Chapter 4 - Feats: Here are 12 pages of feats. Some, like Bonus Breath, Deadly Poison, and Pervasive Gaze are specific to monsters. Others, like Cumbrous Reflexes, Involuntary Rage, and Pain Mastery could be taken by the basic races. Overall, the feats here seem balanced and many are actually interesting and useful. It's one of the better chapters of the book.

Chapter 5 - Equipment: These 18 pages of "monster equipment" are another high point of the book. There's not much special about the mundane monster weapons, but the table for scaling weapons to monsters of variable proportion is nice. The Special and Superior item are decent enough, with a few gems like aboleth mucus and spore flasks. What I really loved about this chapter was the new magic items. As a DM, there is a definate appeal to magic items than are more useful to my NPCs than the PCs. How much use is a good party going to get out of Elf Breaker (+4 morningstar in the hands of a goblinoid that is in combat with an elf or a group which includes an elf) or an Ice Scythe (which is only really powerful in the hands of a creature of the cold subtype)? Some of the magic items seem mainly to be ways for inhuman creatures to overcome certain problems of interacting with a PC party such as gazeblind goggles (which blocks the wearers gaze attacks) and gloves of man (presto...tentacle monster now has fully functional hands).

Chapter 6 - Spells: This chapter is only 14 pages long. For some reason, I had expected more in the way of monstrous spells, but I can't say I'm too disappointed. The spells here range from the 1st level Low-Light Vision (which is exactly what it sounds like) to the 9th level Incarnate Construct (turns a construct into a living creature). It's a pretty good mix of spells and every core-class caster gets a decent selection except for the Paladin, who just gets the boring Major Resistance.

Chapter 7 - Prestige Classes: At 28-pages, the biggest chapter so far, we are presented with 10 prestige classes aimed at monsters. Nearly every d20 product has prestige classes in it, which is fine since I think they're one of the coolest aspects of the system, and these are somewhat special. We're given Emancipated Spawn, Illithid Savant, Master of Flies, Scaled Horror, the Siren, the Slaad Brooder, Survivor, the Sybil, Waverider, and Yaun-ti Cultist. I can see using almost all of these at least once for NPCs and I don't see anything that stands out that would prevent me from allowing them to a PC except that I wouldn't allow many of the creatures which they'd need to be to take certain ones. Sorry group, no Yuan-Ti Cultist PCs in my game.

Chapter 8 - Campaigns: This chapter really needed more than four pages. Ideally, it is supposed to help you integrate monstrous characters into your game. In execution, it doesn't have more than a couple of paragraphs worth of useful advice. Of course, I've been using monstrous characters quite well since the previous edition, so I didn't really need this chapter at all. However, to someone who hasn't already put years of thought to the ramifications of such PCs, this isn't going to be much help.

Chapter 9 - Advancing A Monster: Another short chapter, this one only 6 pages. This one didn't need more space though. It gives practical explainations on how gaining levels affects a monstrous character and gives over two pages of overview on how specific feats are valuable. Nothing earth shaking, but at least it does its duty.

Chapter 10 - Templates: In 34 pages, this chapter presents 18 new templates. The templates include Feral Creature, Gelatinous Creatures, Ghost Brute, Incarnate Construct, Insectile Creature, Monstrous Beast, Multiheaded Creature, Mummified Creature, Reptilian Creature, Spectral Creature, Spectral Creature, Symbiotic Creature (Will someone please write a story which explains believably why a bugbear and a stirge would voluntarily merge together to become a "bugsucker"? Could they have picked a better example creature to illustrate just how ridiculous this template is?), Tauric Creature, Umbral Creature, Wight, Winged Creature (Was there really a need for a template just to stick wings on something?), Wraith, Yuan-ti and Yuan-ti tainted ones. This is a very mixed bag, but overall I think the good outweighs the bad.

Chapter 11 - Becoming A Monster: These 8 pages are about how to handle your players whining about wanting to turn their current normal characters into monsters so they can get some use out of this book without starting a new character. It describes various ways to become a monster. It's a decent chapter and does what it intends to do.

Appendix I - Sample Monster Classes: At 54-pages, this is the largest section of the book. It contains 53 sample Monster classes taken from creatures out of the Monster Manual. Monster classes vary wildly in their number of levels, ranging from the 4-level Grig to 20-level classes like the Astral Deva or the Ghaele. Most of the classes seem exceptionally potent when compared to equivalent levels in a PC class, but nothing terribly game breaking that I've been able to catch. I can't think of many creatures from the Monster Manual that they didn't use that they should have. A lot of the ones they did use I can't see much use for, but maybe someone else will. I just know that ultimately, I'll probably get a lot of use out of this section.

Appendix II - Compiled Tables: This is four pages of tables compiling the minimum necessary stats to make most of the critters in the Monster manual playable, including ECL, Level adjustment, Stat adjustment, and so on. A handy little quick reference.

Appendix III - New Creatures: Eight pages of new critters. Here we have the anthromorphic animal template (why wasn't this in Chapter 10), the half-ogre written up as a playable race, and Monster Manual style entries for the Desmodu (originally from one of the Adventure Path modules, I think), the Loxo, and the Thri-Kreen. Decent bonus material.

In Conclusion: I found a lot to like about this book and some reasons to feel disappointed. It definately goes a long way to help facilitate playing monsters from the Monster Manual, and does give some not great but decent information of how to use creatures from other sources. There's not much at all in the way of developing characterization for monsters or hints on how to role-play them. I'm happy with my purchase, and would recommend it to those who need help with the statistical end of intigrating monsters into their selection of player selectable races.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I wasn't planning on buying this book. When I did, I was pleasantly surprised.

Savage Species is the D&D sourcebook on playing monstous characters. It's a pretty decent value at $29.95 US for a 224 page hardcover book. It has, in general, very good art. I'm not an art critic, but nothing stood out as being silly or poorly drawn (as did, say the MM2 gem dragons or the epic iconic characters). Some of it was pretty amusing, as the artists had some fun with the topic of monsters as player characters. The cover shows a troll divided into two halves (like Alhandra on the cover of the ELH). One half is an ordinary troll with a tree-brach club on the ground next to him; the other half is a troll fighter with armor and a sword. The editing was noticably bad, with random underscores throughout the book and numerous other typos. It has a confusing and sometimes senseless organization, having a whopping 11 chapters and 3 appendices. The production quality of this book is not really awful, but it's not very good either.

This book has the odd distinction of trying to be forward compatible with 3.5e D&D. It includes some previews of the new edition, such as changed face and reach, new skills, and the treatment of monster hit dice in a way that more resembles the way class levels work. It also includes vague information that I hope will become clarified in 3.5e, such as a feat referring to Improved Evasion as allowing you to reroll a save. I'm not sure how many of the monster references are consistent with the new Monster Manual, but some aren't consistent with the old one. Overall, it's not 100% 3.5e compatible, but it does well enough to make it worth buying.

A Chapter-by-Chapter Overview:

The Introduction
Among the normal things, the intro outlines the 3.5e changes that are reflected in the pages to come. That was thoughtful.

Chapter 1: Character Creation (4 pages)
Basically like the start of the PHB, but describes the steps for creating monster characters. Not much going on here.

Chapter 2: Monstrous Characters (16 pages)
This is where the book really starts. Here it is explained that monsters gain feats and skills at the same rate characters do. A new table that will surely be in the 3.5e Monster Manual shows us the amount of skill points each monster type gets (notable error: outsiders get 8+int mod skill points per HD, not 2). The chapter is from there on devoted to explaining and providing Effective Character Levels. ECL is defined as the number of hit dice the monster has, plus a level adjustment for special abilities. An in-depth examination of what monster qualities are worth increasing the level adjustment for follows. ECL tables for many Monster Manual monsters, as well as compiled stat modifiers for those creatures, is included. It also describes how to "acid test" the ECL to be sure the ECL is correct, possibly altering the estimate the rest of the chapter is giving you. Examples are included, and they are helpful. A compiled table of what abilities are worth a level adjustment would have been nice, but it's not there.
The main problem with this system is that it treats all types of monster HD as being equal, both to each other and to levels in character classes. This is not the case. However, the ECLs provided are mostly reasonable, the explanations and examples are helpful, and any problems are easily fixed by DM intervention and judgement calls (which this book requires a lot of anyway).

Chapter 3: Monster Classes (4 pages)
There are a lot of little chapters in this book. This briefly outlines the process of taking a monsters ECL of X and breaking it into an X-level progression so you can start out as, say, a first level minotaur and gradually gain the full abilities of the monster as you approach the ECL of 8. This is a revolutionary concept that really allows monsters to be be played in campaigns that start at first level. Examples of monster classes are provided in an appendix; this chapter mostly describes the rules for using them.

Chapter 4: Feats (12 pages)
This chapter describes a number of new feats, many of them monster oriented (such as Virulent Poison or Improved web), but some useful for anyone (such as the Cumbrous save feats). A lot of these feats are good, and I use make sure to keep this book handy for creating all my monsters because of this chapter. However, some feats are trouble. There are rage-like feats I wouldn't allow, Greater Flyby Attack, which allows flying creatures to take a number of attacks equal to their dex mod on a charge, and a new and awfully confusing and convoluted take on Empower Spell-like Ability. Good stuff mostly, but like with any book, the DM has to know what to houserule, because there are a few real toublemakers in here.

Chapter 5: Equipment (18 pages)
This is another useful and important chapter with rules for different-size weapons and new items both magical and not. It includes actual write-ups of equipment from the original Monster Manual, such as Pixie Arrows, items based on the MM, such as Aboleth Mucus, and handy magic items, including a amulet that enhances natural attacks and items to help out monsters with not enough limbs (or with too many). Lots of useful stuff in here.

Chapter 6: Spells (14 pages)
This is something of a drop-off in quality. There are a few useful spells in here, but also a lot of typos, some broken things (a first level spell that grants the ability to charge and full attack in one round), and some useless spells (such as Improved Enlarge and Reduce, which are fifth level but only change the duration of the original spells and make them touch range). There are also a number of reprinted spells in here. If you want monstrous spells, check out the issue of Dragon that had them, because this chapter isn't much. On the other hand, spells aren't what I bought the book for.

Chapter 7: Prestige Classes (18 pages)
I'm not the biggest fan of the glut of prestige classes for third edition D&D. That said, this isn't a bad chapter. Rules and advice for creating and using prestige classes are here, as well as ten actual prestige classes. Most are very specific. For instance, the Yuan-ti Cultist is obviously only useful if you're into Yuan-ti. There are also a few balance problems. Then again, show me a supplement that has prestige classes but no overpowered ones. The ones in here aren't bad. Some are quite interesting, including the Illithid Savant, who gains the abilities of the people whose brains he eats, or the Empancipated Spawn, an undead who gradually recalls his class abilities. The oddball Survivor prestige class has no base attack bonus at all, but five levels of extremely powerful defensive abilities. Overall, not a bad chapter.

Chapter 8: Campaigns (4 pages)
Another very short chapter. It has some advice on running a campaign with monstrous characters, but not a lot. I wasn't expecting a second DM guide, but this would have been a good place to include a lot more roleplaying advice or guidlines on how to DM monsters. Not much of a chapter.

Chapter 9: Advancing a Monster (6 pages)
Here are guidelines for advancing a monster. Better CR adjustment rules for advanced monsters are presented, along with DM advice. This chapter is mostly useful for novice DMs. The last half of it is a listing of the core feats and a look at how the DM should use them when creating monster characters. As an experienced DM, I didn't get much out of this chapter, but I see why they included it, and some people might have more use for it than me. By the way, after nine chapters, we're not quite halfway through the book. That's why I said the organization was unusual.

Chapter 10: Templates (34 pages)
This chapter is what got this book up to a 4 rating. It opens with handy clarifications and advice on using templates, as well as a step-by-step outline of adding one, and proceeds to the templates themselves. There are a lot. They are listed with level adjustments and a more complete description of how to apply them. A couple of reprints, such as Tauric from the MM2 and the Yuan-ti templates from Monsters of Faerun are in here, but most of it is new. There are templates for many undead from the original MM, including Ghost Brute (for things with insufficient Charisma to be normal ghosts), Mummified, Spectral, Umbral (Shadow), Wight, and Wraith. There are also compeltely different ones, such as the Feral template to make a primitive, barbaric, powerful creature, Gelatinous, Insectile, Reptilian, Multiheaded, and Symbiotic, which combines two creatures. At the end are some miscellaneous notes on core and Savage Species templates, including some clarifications that are good to know. Overall a very interesting chapter that you can get a lot of milage out of. I've used several of the templates myself already.

Chapter 11: Becoming a Monster (7 pages)
This confusing chapter covers the process of turning a normal character into a monster through various magical rituals. Changing the ECL creates headaches. I know the D&D rules well and it confused me, so be warned. It did need to be in here, however, and some players will make use of the rituals gladly.

Appendix 1: Sample Monster Classes (53 pages)
There are a lot. Not everything you may have wanted, but several giants, fey, hags, and even outsiders, elementals, and undead are built as monster classes. This is where to look to figure out how to build your own Monster Classes more than just a reference. I won't say they're all perfectly balanced (some are frontloaded for example, becuase the outsider hit die in particular gives a lot of benefits at first level). However, I wouldn't say the core classes are all perfectly balanced, either. There's a lot of space used on this Appendix, and it's largely worth it.

Appendix 2: Compiled Tables (10 pages)
A bunch of tables that contain many MM monsters lited by name and by ECL, along with ECL's and basic info. Useful, even if it only contains core critters (and not all of those).

Appendix 3: New Creatures (8 pages)
The Antropomorphic template, which allows people to play a half-human/half-animal is here (why it isn't with the other templates I don't know). The half-ogre is presented as a charater race, as well as the Desmodu, Loxo and Thri-kreen reprinted from the MM2.

At the end is a brief index, which is always appreciated.

My personal experience with this book is significant. I have an Invisible Stalker player (which wasn't discussed in there, but I used the guidelines to create my own monster class for him). I have a half-ogre player (takes the half-orc barbarian archetype to a whole new level). I've used the templates and feats and items for my NPC's. It's been a surprisingly useful book for me.

Overall, Savage Species is a good book. It has editing flaws and some balance problems, but if you have an interest in monstrous characters, it's worth having. I find it especially good to have as a DM, since it's very useful in creating NPC's. If you want to play a monster, this book can really help. If you're not enthralled with the idea, check it out anyway. It might change your mind. It certainly opened my eyes. It's not even close to being a 5, but I can definitely give it a 4, along with my recommendation.

 

[negativtoo]

Appearances :

Savage Species comes at 224 full colour pages for 29,95 US$, only one page of which is advertisement ( seems impossible to avoid for the publishers these days ), with an uncluttered twin coloumns layout. The book is a sturdy hardcover, similar in appearance to the psionic handbook

The internal Artwork is mostly in colour and of high to exceptional quality. The layout does waste little space, although the number of charts and tables apeears quite daunting at first glance (more about this later ). While not a cheap purchase, quality and makeup of the book make it an acceptable bargain

The Works :
Savage Species is aimed at providing feasible and universal rules for both the players and the gamemaster to faciliate play of "non-standard" player character races - e.g. anything which is not of human, elven, dwarven halfling or gnomish heritage, or rather not part of an another WoC publication. This basically means anything from goblins to giants, from feys to fiendish and celestial outsiders, from constructs to undead ! Most if any GMs usually flinch ( I know i do ) at the daunting task of translating an interesting monstrosity from my campaign into a player-usable "race" - keeping its flavours, while making the necessary incisions to maintain game balance and fun for everyone else. Some definite and hopefully playtested rules and outlines as to actually facilliating play for this ( and IMHO WoC had to have had some definite formula/rules from the outset, as it provided a bunch of extraneous races in its many supplements, starting as early as the FR hardcover ) were highly welcome and desirable.....

Looking at the contents though, we first get some basic rules about monsters as characters, how to evaluate their special abilities ( such as Fast Healling, Damage Reduction, Natural Armour ).. WoC slips up for the first time (alas, not the only time) here - while most "special abilities" and their "ECL" modifiers are listed here, a simple chart or reference table is missing - in a book, which has more charts than your average text on advanced economics, this is a surprise and rather careless oversight. Also a number of their judgements seem definitely askew - e.g. while the ability to climb or burrow warants an adjustment in WoCs mind, any amount of landspeed is negligible...ahem !!! As almost any fighter or rogue will vouch for, landspeed is a major factor in d20 tactical combat. Bad oversight here...

Neither are there provisions in the rules to evaluate possible disadvantages or shortcomings of a race, and no provisions are made to evaluate the usefulness/value of specific abilities at varying levels - while "reach" (ECL+1) will stay useful at almost any level, minor innate spellcasting ability (like that of a drow or swirvneblin ) will fade in usefulness at higher levels, but has the same level adjustment. Other abilities seem horrendously cheap in their ECL, especially if no precise mechanism for their efficency is given - as an example the ability to do stat-damage in whatever way is valued at an ECL+1 regardless of its DC or duration... (This could be DC10 or DC 20, depending upon the creature used ). The extremly useful "blindsight" ability is of the same value as "scent"... and judgements like (energy)protection/30 being a mere ECL+2 should be eyed _very_ carefully by any GM facing creative players. Should a helpful player do a "calculation" of a possible race he considers to play according to this rules, doublecheck !
This section seems heavily in need of editing and rework by a GM intending to use it - sadly it is one of the core chapters of the book - most other chapters are founded on the groundwork laid here.
1/5

Following this one finds the "obilgatory" 10 pages of new feats for beasts and creatures (which basically I would have liked to see in the MM or the MM2, but - alas - that was not to be ) and another 15 pages of stuff/equipment monsters can wield. While this does look like a lot of pages and contents, one should keep in mind that most of the items and feats presented can be used or are useful for a very narrow subset of monsters only - I doubt one will see Salamander spears in the hands of all that many mummies, but some flavour at least is generated. Also one finds a highly useful table of damage development in relation to weapon size.... Add 13 pages of new spells usefull mostly to monstrous creatures and 24 pages of prestige classes for monstrous creatures. Lamentably, these prestige classes are mostly confined to specific creatures (such as the Illithid Savant - you need to be a mind flayer to rise in it...) or very narrow sub-group like the spawn/offspring of a stronger undead. While many are interesting spins (if one uses the base monsters - like Yuan Tin, Slaadi or Illithids ), only the Sybil (oracular mystic ) and the Survivor (saves oriented prestige class without any rise in base attack or spell-casting) seem to have appeal for a broader selection of characters. 2 out of 8 is not bad, especially if one can make use out of another for NPCs in one's camapign.
3/5

Next is a chapter I had great expectations for - "Campaigns". Well - while it has some nice ideas and concepts, the fact that it is a whopping 4 pages long ruins all possible greatness it hinted at... a mere 2% of a book devoted to "actually playing" the characters created is TOO LITTLE !
2/5

The vast expanse of six pages are devoted to the advancement of monsters through HD-increase, with some rules and hints as to how to develop, play and furnish such creatures. While nice, IMHO this should have been in MM-1 or MM-2, not here. This was supposed to be a book about monstrous characters, not bigger monstrous NPCs... while good, it is off-topic
3/5

Templates - well this chapter looked nice and useful ( if one is willing to ignore the basic premise that this was intended to be book for "alternate (N)PC races" ), with the ability to vary some "classic" creatures for special needs or filling some ecological niches ( such as "ghost brutes" - ghost of beings with low charisma - animals etc... slain by ghosts and turned into ghostly remnants), some of them are deceptively harmless in appearance, while actually quite dangerous if used without some testing, as the creature produced is often far more dangerous than the original creature - for example the "wight"-template's energy drain ability (draining levels, btw ) is _twice_ as powerful as that of a standard wight ( no explanations for this btw) , and usually yields a much higher DC-save to boot !!!
Use this templates on large melee creatures with extreme care (!!!!) - one lucky series of strikes from something like an ettin or giant can leave groups severly crippled. Similar warnings should be added for templates conferring etherealness ("umbral", "wraith" and "spectral" templates, - I killed the main 9th level fighter of my group in 2 rounds of fighting with an "umbral"-Ettin (CR8) simply through the strength drain....) or other ability-drain features. Again it shows that some of the "special attack" ECL/CR-values seem to be way off. Some are rather pointless or simply silly - while I never saw Orcs or Ogres as especially civilised, I somehow doubt that by reverting to an even more barbaric existence they get faster, tougher, with the sudden growth of dangerous claws and regeneration (Landspeed +10, Natural Armou +6, D10 HD, Claw attacks and Fast Healing 2 (or better) abilities, Str+4, Con+2, with Dex-2 and Int-4 to balance.... and all for a +1 CR or CR+2 ??? Yeah sure...)... As for more civilised humanoids, say like elves, gnomes, or feys etc this is even weirder. And as for shaped jelly/goo creatures, I will withhold my judgement and laugh in seclusion.This section seems to have bypassed playtesting entirely - at least in wide parts. Still the templates are inspirational to a GM. To a player they are of rather limited use, if any.
1.5/5

The last chapter deals with the magical transformation characters/creatures into other creatures, both with possible methods (and their drawbacks/side effects ) and some hints as to the actual effects for the (un-)fortunate being... While useful, it lacks depth and makes some very strange assumptions to boot - being slowly transformed into a Slaad ( after the bite of another Slaad ) I basically expect more than the hint that"the characters mind and memory stay intact" "there is no bond between the ...Slaad and the ... character, who is free to act as he wills"... <sarcasm on> Sure, being slowly and magically changed (one can only guess at pain, disorientation and discomfort) from within into a huge 8' humanoid outsider toad made out of concentrated chaos is going to leave the average medieval adventurer sane, happy and unbothered... <sarcasm off>
I am not going to quote from the useless entries for becoming a bodak, ghoul, lycanthrope or others . While I am not into "world of darkness" like "angst and despair"-roleplaying, this is far too little advice to GMs and players alike who intend not to make an unlucky character an NPC by default. Then again, this chapter being only 7 pages long should be a hint as to its depth. more than all of the other chapters, this part shows the underlying tendency of the books to simply further "ruleplaying" and "rollplaying" at the near total expense of "roleplaying"
1/5

Last in the book - and starting at page 152 of 224 - are the appendixes. well one third of the book as an appendixes ?

well "Appendix One" consists of Monster classes, 50 pages of them aactually, allowing players to play a monster from level one instead of waiting to play it once the characterlevel allows picking it due to its ECL. While basicaly a nice idea ( a group of youngling monsters duking it out with the worlds sounds interesting ) this chapter has two very serious problems crippling it:

First, I sincerly doubt the need for evil or good outsider (Tanaari and Baatezu anyone ? Archons ?), giantic, haggish, or beastish character classes (like the griffon) for almost any campaign - both in variety (if at all, probabaly only one or two of the classes offered ) and ability and focus.
The second problem is even worse - very few monster classes have less than five to eight levels - and being _unable_ ( read "not permitted") to take another class while still being able to progress in your monster class, this can be a very long process. Also, most of these classes have much higher end levels than their actual challenge rating in the MM-1 and MM-2, e.g. the Rakshasa ( a CR-9 creature) is a 14-level class - therefore, when, you finish it another player in your campaign who played a normal human character would have a 14th level character... Now, according to the DMG, any normal character constitutes a CR according to his character level.... so the player playing the rakshasa is now either playing a CR9 (according to the MM-1) or a CR14 (according to the Savage Species ) character for one. I am pretty certain that most experienced players would not trade in a normally developed 14th level character for a 7HD Rakhshasa..... or even less a 12th level char for an 5HD Ogre Mage (CR8) an 8th level char for a 3HD Sea Hag (CR4).. or a 3HD (CR3) Shadow. Besides posing rather unattractive and limiting character choices, these "monster classes" provide an inherent contradiction to the DMG or to the MM - after all a 9th plevel char should/does present a CR9 encounter, unless one is playing against a Monster class. If taken literally one could even argue, that a "young and immature", as in not fully developed creature like a 13h level Firegiant characcter (hence CR13) - with 4 less HD, less and weaker attacks , worse saves, less Feats , weaker Stats and unable to throw rocks yet would pose a far greater challenge than a fully grown Fire Giant (CR-10) straight from the MM-1.
Or basically, you could face a level MM-1 firegiant with 9 levels of cleric /fighter
/sorcerer /whatever with your "monsterclass" level19 firegiant in a fair CR19 vs CR19 fight.................... And this calculation can be drawn up for each and all of the monster classes presented here - sometime more visible, sometimes less so, but still detectable in actual play. As a general rule - the more powerful (high CR) the creature you are playing the greater the relative loss in actual power through the monster class. In actual Gamplay this means that only those players with very little interest in the actual power of the class played would choose a monster class - and those players are the ones , a GM needs the least rules for. Still, this is a rules connundrum and pitfall of massive proportions - making the whole appendix useless for actual playing and GMing, except as raw material to build from, anew. How this could actually make it past some actual playtesting beats me.

In all honesty, I expected more from WoC - either to accomplish the - to my mind - very difficult job of actually finding a way to make "monster classes" (as opposed to unusual humanoid classes) work and playable through staggered acquisition of abilities and stats similar to conventional character classes ( as sadly they tried with the result stated above), or the humility and common sense to draw a line and definitely state that such creatures are not intended for player use - and any GM who wanted to try nevertheless should try on his own. WoC failed on both accounts, and gave us 50 pages of "monster" classes, which IMHO no one will ever touch with a 10' pole. Making this appendice a large waste - roughly 22% of the book, sadly enough.
1/5

Appendix 2 consists of one large chart providing ECLs, stats modifiers, skill point calculation and saves and base attack progression for a range of (near-)humanoids and monstrous races, ostentibly all from MM-1, taking up 9 pages. Nice, but I guess this will reappear in MM-1 (v3.5) in june 2003. Also, I highly doubt many of these could actually be integrated into any normal campaign without additional information/rules, for which i guess the MM-1 alone might not suffice.
2/5

Appendix 3 gives sample rules for Anthromorphic animals (aka "Furries"), which, while unexpected is nice and useful, especially for some faerie-tale type storylines or a true "Furry" campaign, rules for half-Ogres ( also unexpected, but very useful ) and stats/rules for Desmodu ( who already appeared in MM-2, the "Deep Horizons"-adventure and other sources, so this is basically a rehash ), the Loxo (elephantine humanoids) and the old "Dark Sun" favourites, the Three Kren. While short, this stuff is actually useful and interesting. If but the entirety of the book had gone into this direction.... well wishful thinking.
4/5


Resumee :
I am severely disappointed by this book - it missed almost any goal it could conceivably have aimed for, the few average or good parts were either too short or subjects the book never intended to hit. As for its usefulness for a player I am rather doubtful, as I see most GMs heavily rewriting stuff presented inside, or vetoing it outright for their campaigns. As for GMs - people willing to invest some time and serious thought withthe will to rewrite and build up from what is presented in here might have some use for it. But those people are those least likely to buy and need this book in the first place. For those needing some reliable, easy to use or reference, balanced and play-tested rules, this book cannot honestly be recommended.
Basically, this book did not miss the score of "1" by much - if not for the high production values and sparse, yet nice, seeds or originality inside, that would have been my score. Yet 2/5 as a total is bad enough for a major/core publisher....