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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Angel Tarragon" data-source="post: 2663191" data-attributes="member: 23733">[imager]http://www.rpgnow.com/products/product_5542.jpg[/imager] Superior Synergy: FantasyNote: I received a copy of this product for review purposesSuperior Synergy: Fantasy brings the element of skill synergy to the gaming table with an expansion to the synergy system and goes beyond to include what synergies might be had from the combination of individual feats as well. What the product is, is a breakdown of all the skills and how they interact with each other. You may have noticed that synergy bonuses top out when a skill has 5 ranks in it. Superior Skill Synergy goes beyond this to allow for greater synergy, and depending on the individual skill, your synergy bonus may top out at 20 ranks. That’s right, 20 ranks. Synergies are cumulative and they the effects of it can be felt through the application of further skill points. That means that as you level up and pour more skill ranks into your skills you benefit from synergies at certain points. At 5 ranks it is obvious that your synergy bonus is +2 to another skill. Extrapolation on this can lead to higher bonuses to the synergy skill at the 10 rank mark or it can apply to different skills. Synergies improve when a skill has 10, 15 or 20 ranks.Now what kind of synergy bonus might one get from having 10, 15 or 20 ranks in a certain skill? Let’s take Escape Artist as an example. We all know that at 5 ranks, a character gains a +2 synergy bonus to Use Rope. When that character has 10 ranks in Escape artist they gain a +3 bonus to Use Rope Checks to bind someone. At 15 ranks the character gains a +4 bonus to Use Rope Checks to bind someone and at 20 ranks a +5 bonus on Use Rope checks to bind someone is gained. You can clearly see that the application of learning the skill is retroactive in the mastery using rope to bind some. Not all skill synergies are like this though. Let’s look at Jump and sere what the synergies are for it. Well, at 5 ranks characters gain a +2 bonus to Tumble checks. At 10 ranks the character the character can make a DC 15 Tumble check and treat a jump as if it were 15 feet shorter than it actually is for the purpose of determining damage taken from falls. Fifteen ranks in Jump allows the character to gain a +4 bonus on Tumble checks. At 20 ranks the character can make a DC 15 Tumble check and treat a jump as if it were 20 feet shorter than it actually is for the purpose of determining damage taken from falls.As clearly evidenced between the two examples, not all synergies give a named bonus to skill checks related to the skill that gains a bonus at 5 ranks. There are plenty of skills that do give named bonuses to other skills though.Innovative in its own right is the feat synergy that is presented in the product. It is an optional system that may be implemented but the author does give warning that if feat synergy feels too much like it is giving away free feats, for the DM to just not allow in their games.While there are groups that use the paired skill focus rule from Unearthed Arcana, this product may make think to go back to named paired skill focuses. Acrobatics and Agile are two such feats that when combined can allow a character to tumble through an area with greater ease. In areas that are sloped or angled a character that has Acrobatics and Agile gain a +1 bonus to tumble through that area. In severely obstructed areas the character gains a +3 bonus to tumble through it and through severely slippery areas the character enjoys a +2 bonus.Characters can go beyond gaining synergies from just having two feats. A character the Acrobatic and Agile feat gains other bonuses if they also gain the Animal Affinity feat. In such a case the character may use the fast mount or dismount (see the Ride skill) on a mount two size categories larger than itself.Feat synergies are not just limited to affecting how skills interact with each other, but also extend to how combat oriented feats can lend their maximum potential to characters that match up particular ones.A character with the Combat Expertise, Improved Disarm, Improved Precise Shot, Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feats may attempt to disarm their opponents using a ranged attack. In order to do so the character needs to roll to disarm, but with a -8 penalty and can not use their normal bonuses and penalties for attempting the disarm. If the ranged weapon that is being used to disarm a small ranged weapon an additional -4 penalty is added but no further penalty is applied for medium ranged weapons. This is very cool indeed. Though the modifiers are there and the chance disarm is lessened, there is no way in the rules as written that a ranged weapon can possibly disarm an individual.Another example of feat synergy is Diligent and Magical Aptitude. A character with these two feats can make one retry attempt as a free action on failed bardic knowledge checks involving magic items.Yet another example is the combination of Athletic, Endurance and Skill Focus (Swim). A character with those feats is allowed a single standard action with no other actions (including free ones) in a round where they are holding their breath without that round counting against them for the total number of rounds that they are allowed to hold their breath for. The character must succeed at a Constitution check where the DC is equal to 10 plus the number of rounds the character has already held their breath for.As you can see the synergies are well thought out and make sense. ConclusionI really like what this product does for the game. It provides a different way to get the maximum potential to characters that wish to combine certain talents of theirs. This product goes above and beyond my expectations. This reviewer gives Superior Synergy: Fantasy 5 stars.</blockquote>

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