NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MadTinkerer" data-source="post: 2008637" data-attributes="member: 1883">Ah, at long last... The fools do not comprehend what they have unleashed upon my home campaign! Muhahahaha!*Ahem*The Dragonstar Starfarer's Handbook is the first book and basically *Player's* Handbook of Fantasy Flight Games's Dragonstar line of d20 products. Dragonstar is a unique setting for D&D: sort of D&D crossed with Star Wars, Star Trek and anything else you can think of with "Star" in the title (That is why they called it Dragonstar). I think that the setting and rules are delicious, but unfortunately, the Handbook itself leaves quite a bit to be desired, hence the mere '4' rating when it COULD have gotten a perfect '5'.Probably the easiest way for me to go over the book is to explain the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.The Good: First of all, there's a LOT of Good. From the scrumptious full color introduction to the last chapter (Vehicles), the SFHB has plenty of Good. The new races are very well done. The Drow stats ensure that you don't need the FRCS to play one in DS, the Orc stats at long last give you the option of playing a full blooded Orc (or "Klingons" as I sometimes call 'em), the Half Dragons k1Ck @$$(in spite of their expensive ECL or "CL" as the SFHB mysteriously puts it), and, my favorite, the Soulmechs. Robots with souls. Mmmmmmmmmmm...The Classes are good too. Although I thought some of the old ones weren't changed enough(What, the Mechanist can have the various Gravity Tolerance Feats as Bonus Feats but the Fighter can't?), most of them were just right. The new PC classes Mechanist(Technician) and Pilot are droolsome. The prestige classes are good except for the IRRITATING fact that the Technomancer has it's own spell list INSTEAD of increasing spell casting ability(like most of the prestige classes in Tome & Blood). Come on: Prestige classes that have their own spell lists are (USUALLY) for characters who don't already cast spells! I'm going to have to re-write this class for may home campaign.Apart from making many of the old Skills VERY archaic(as opposed to only slightly archaic), the Skills chapter is good too. The new skills are very good: Demolitions, Repair, Research and Use Device being at the top of my personal list.The Feats chapter is all good, including the modfied old Feats. As for the new Feats, Dragonblood is my favorite from a DM's point of view(very flavorful and it's worth making a prerequisite to taking the Dragon Disciple class in Tome & Blood), though Implant Spellware is my favorite from a player's perspective.While reading the Equipment chapter, the book had to be pried away from my hands before I completely soaked it in drool and ruined it. Powered armor. Keenblade weapons. LOTS of "shooty things". Robots. 'Nuf said.All of the new Combat rules are nice and intuitive. 'Nuf said.The Magic chapter is great, especially Scrollware. Most of the modififications to spells are intuitive and just "make sense". I love all of the new spells too.The final chapter, vehicles is worth getting all by itself. You could think of the book as a $20 Starship rules add on for D&D with a bonus $10 rulesbook on playing characters in a sci fi setting if you want to.  The last chapter is that good. (A little short on stats for space ships, though)In short, this book has so much good stuff it almost gets a 5. Read on to see why it doesn't.The Bad: There's not a whole lot of bad, but wait until you get to the Ugly part!I don't really see the point of ANY of the NPC classes being included in this book and consider them a waste of space.I take some issue with some of the modifications to the old skills. Surely Cryptography is just high-tech Decipher Script? Not allowing even Synergy bonuses between the two skills weakens Rogues from Outlands worlds too much in my option.Also, what about Soulmech Paladins? I guess as DM I could just say they don't have to pay credits for robotic upgrades, but what about Laying On Hands? Well I'll figue it out later.WTH are Space and Star dragons? They're options for half dragon parents, but they're not even metioned ANYWHERE else! Now I KNOw they're going to be in the Galaxy Guide, but if it's an option for players, the characters should know about it! Instead of having the NPC classes, the space SHOULD have been spent on a few pages of Spellware. Just the "basic" stuff like Trauma Symbiotes and Cosmetic Surgery(or whatever it's called).Furthermore, and I do understand this is just me being picky, but The Creator and The Adversary should be way better defined than merely "Any domain but Chaos or Evil". In my campaign, the Creator won't grant access to the Chaos, Death, Evil or Trickery domains. Furthermore, The Adversary cannot grant access to the Animal, Death, Destruction, Good, Healing, Law, Luck, Plant, Protection, Strength, Sun or War domains. So there.Finally, what happened to the Elves' "living spaceships"? I guess that's being saved for the Galaxy Guide also.All of these things still aren't enough to reduce the score of the book below 5. Read on.The Ugly: Oh my...Sadly, this is the part where I must knock two points off the score.Although having a mostly black & white book isn't bad, I DID pay thirty bucks for it. That still isn't enough to reduce the score as much as I did... however...Editing gaffes: This is the really ugly part. Tons and tons of little things like: having Class Features listed in alphabetical order insteads of the order that the character develops them, occasionally not explaining at which level a character gets a Class Ability, or forgetting to put in bullet points for bullet point items 3 and 4 when bullet point items 1 and 2 have bullet points.Other gaffes are things like "All keenblades provide a +1 bonus on attack rolls and this bonus stacks with bonuses for begin of masterwork quality and magic enhancement bonuses" or having a table that contradicts the text. Fortunately, nearly all of these are easy to work out or have already been errata-ed on the FFG web site.Finally, there weren't enough illustrations! I know the story behind it (FFG had big problems with getting the art they did), but I still think that the Equipment section should have had a picture of EVERY new tech weapon and armor (like in the PHB and all WotC D&D supplements that have new equipment) and a few examples of Keenblade weapons. A few of the illustrations also looked a bit "murky" (like on page 128 ) because they were obviously originally in color.In short, the less than perfect editing combined with the fact that 90% of the $30 book is in black & white forces me to deduct 2 points from the score. Yes, I know hardbound books have to be more expensive. Considering that, I'm still deducting 2 points.Charisma Modifier +1: Dang it, I just can't give this book a 3! So I'm arbitrarily adding a point. Except for the "Ugly", the book DID live up to my inflated expectations. Besides, it's D&D in space! You can play a Soulmech Wizard/Mechanist! You can create an army of robots if you have the credits! You can work for the Empire, against the Empire, explore the Dark Zone or whatever you want! It's all right there and as soon as I get my grubby mits on the Galaxy Guide, my home campaign is going to REALLY have fun!If I had the option of getting a softcover version of the exact same book for $25 it would get a score of 5. If the introduction was the same and a few more pages were in color throughout the book(Yes, I DO realise the technical difficulty of such an idea...), the book would get a 5. As it is, I have to give it a 4 because it is unfortunately less than perfect.Final score: 4</blockquote>

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