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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010213" data-attributes="member: 172">Avatar's HandbookThe Avatar's Handbook is a book in Green Ronin Master Class series of books which introduce new core character classes for the d20 System. That said, the book also presents a number of good outsiders, and could also be viewed as a sourcebook of such. The Avatar's Handbook is written by Jesse Decker, author of Green Ronin's Hammer & Helm and editor of Dragon magazine.A First LookThe Avatar's Handbook is an 80-page perfect bound softcover book priced at $16.95. This is fairly standard for a d20 System book of this size.The cover of the book is illustrated by James Ryman. It depicts an angelic being striking down a demon (an alrunes from Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss), with a robed figure in a column of light atop a stone column in the backdrop.The interior is black and white, and features illustrations by Jennifer Meyer, Brit Martin, Kent Burles, and veteran RPG artist Liz Danforth. I find the work by Jennifer Meyer especially good and well fitting to the theme of the book, but the work by the other artists is fairly good as wellThe interior text is dense, but paragraphs are double spaced. The layout is functional and attractive.A Deeper LookThe Avatar's Handbook namesake is the avatar class. The avatar isn't quite the classical definition of the avatar (i.e., a physical manifestation or extension of a deity.) Rather, it is a divine spellcasting class with specialty in summon and taking on characteristics of celestials.However, one can't help but notice that less than one-fourth of this book is dedicated to the class, spells included. The remainder of the book is creature descriptions, specifically celestials and other good outsiders. That being the case, you might wonder why this book is in the master class series at all. It might be better to slot it in alongside the Green Ronin books of fiends.However, this is all a technicality. I would guess the decision to present the material this way was to make it more saleable. In d20 System fantasy games, good creatures often have limited roles in the game as the PCs are the main protagonists. This makes a book about benign creatures less appealing than a book about dangerous, threatening, or downright evil creatures. But by presenting a PC archetype that makes good use of this information, a major book with such creatures becomes viable.The book is organized into four chapters and two appendices. The first chapter describes the avatar and the second new spells. The remaining chapters and appendices introduce new good creatures and creature templates.The avatar itself is a divine spellcasting class. It has poorer combat abilities than the cleric or druid, with slow BAB progression and d6 HD. The avatar uses Charisma as a casting statistic, and knows a limited number of spells like a sorcerer. The avatar always knows the monster summoning spell of all levels of spells they can cast, and must always be good.In addition to their spellcasting abilities, the avatar gains a number of other abilities as they advance, primarily the sarcred boon and heaven's mantle abilities. Heaven's mantle ability is essentially like the druid's wild shape ability, except that the avatar learns to transform into the form of celestials that she can summon. As the avatar progresses, more forms are learned and the ability may be used more times per day.The sacred boon ability operates somewhat like the secret ability of the loremaster. At every five levels, the avatar may select a new ability from a list, and the ability available is determined by the avatar's level and charisma modifier.A short selection of new feats buffs up the avatar's summoning abilities. Most of these feats are suitable, but one seems a bit off to me. Imperitive summoning states that a good creature summoned by the character gets a partial action the round in which it was summoned and an extra partial action each round after that. The later is alright (if powerful) but the former is misleading as summoned creatures can act normally upon arriving without this feat.The spells chapter introduces new spells as well as providing additions of summoned creatures in this book to the summon monster spells. All of the new spells are available to avatars, but some are also crosslisted as cleric and sorcerer/wizard spells.Many of the new spells are banner spells. Banner spells create a magical banner that the avatar must hold that creates a special effect. The character can choose to use the banner to attack a foe with devastating effects, but when this is done the banner is dispelled.The heart of this book is really the creatures, though. Chapter three lists creatures classified as celestials. One of these creatures fits into the existing subcategory of archon, but most fit into one of the two new categories (aeons and hallowed) or have no subcategory at all.Aeons are extremely ancient creatures, perhaps remnants of an older celestial order or byproducts of creation of the world. Aeons are all based around a specific concept such as loyalty, sacrifice, or beauty. The season shepherds are aeons that represent the four seasons.One example of an aeon is the lathar, the aeon of loyalty. The lathar appears like a six-legged hound the size of a horse. Lords of good send lathar to assist heroes. Lathars are fundamentally a good concept, but the book says that paladins of 8th level may select one as a bonded mount. Lathars have the ability to teleport without error at will, along with a rider, which strikes me as way too generous a boon to grant an 8th level character.I found the martrym, the aeons of sacrifice, to be an interesting and potentially useful concept. The matrym is a relatively weak, low level creature. The matrym can sacrifice itself to give a worthy recipient a temporary boon, which strikes me as a potentially interesting story element.The hallowed are a sort of celestial with a specific purpose in mind. They are sent by the lords of good to return an evil creature to the path of righteousness. The weakest is the accuser, who can confront a creature with its own wrongdoings. The strongest is the penitent, which can force creatures to turn to good and burn those who refuse. Each hallowed can summon the next stronger type of summoned if the creature admits fault such that it can be moved along the path to righteousness.Chapter four provides a number of other creature native to the upper planes. This includes three celestial dragons, the dream dragon (CG), the glory dragon (NG), and the radiant dragon (CG). Other creatures include the bizarre psuedo-elephantine gargun, two constructs used in the heavens, and an elemental, the living flamestrike.Appendix I discusses archangels, including history of the archangel and statistics for a few example archangels. Archangels are unique creatures with only a few common aspects; other than this, archangels each have their own area of governance.Appendix II continues to dish out the good ideas with templates.The half-dragon template from the Monster Manual is extended with statistics for three new types of half-dragon corresponding to the three celestial dragons.The reforged template is the result of a few unique locations in which an evil creature can be infused with the power of good. Such a creature gains additional abilities, and all of its evil powers are turned towards good. Two samples are provided, a reforged gnoll and a reforged cornugon.Other templates include sublime (which creates a powerful contemplative creature with great nobility of purpose), uncalled (a creature with an unfished purpose returned to life to complete it), and the wordbearer (a creature empowed by a deity to act on its behalf.)Finally, the book has a character sheet addendum provided for recording summoned creatures.ConclusionThis idea of the avatar was a hard sell to me, as I imagine it will be for many. If you don't mind a new base class for what is likely to be a fairly rare class, then the class seems balanced and interesting. However, unless your campaign has a large emphasis on summoning creatures or on the armies of heaven, it is not likely that your campaign is ready for this class.The books serves well as a resource for celestial creatures, and the avatar does serve as a conduit to make these creatures meaningful in your campaign. However, if you are not adverse to the ideas of good monsters as plot elements or sharing the spotlight with PCs (or as foes of evil PCs), many of the creatures stand on their own. Some of the creatures (particularly some of the templates) are not so interesting, but most have some pretty compelling built in hooks and obvious ways to work them into a campaign (much like the devils in Legions of Hell.Overall Grade: B-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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