The Book of the Sea
By Gareth Hanrahan
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 8805
256 pages, $34.95
The eagerly-awaited update/upgrade to Mongoose's original aquatic adventuring book,
Seas of Blood, Gareth Hanrahan's
Book of the Sea was to be the "the definitive work" on the subject (as are all books in the "Classic Play" line meant to be). While I don't think the book quite reached its lofty goal, there is quite a bit of good material in here. Sadly, much of it is hampered by some unfortunate production choices.
The cover is by long-term Mongoose artist Brent Chumley, and while it's a quite well-done piece, with a good eye toward detail, some excellent shading techniques, and some very cool lightning in the background, I still wince at the choice of ship. Out of the 17 sailing vessels detailed in the book, Brent chose one of the two arguably silliest-looking ships in the whole book: the elven swanship. Take a Viking longboat, remove the cool-looking dragon figurehead that makes Viking ships look so fierce, and replace it with the front half of a swan. I'll give Brent credit for doing a very good-looking swan, but I can't help but feel that judging solely by the cover of
Book of the Sea (and we all know better than to judge a book by its cover, though, don't we?), you might think the book should be more properly titled
Book of Bathtub Toys. (By the way, for the record, the other arguably silliest-looking ship in this book is the other elven one, the Rose of the Seas - yes, it's a really, really big rose blossom that floats. I'm no elf-basher, but these particular elves are about the lamest I've heard of. Maybe one of these days I should try to hunt up Mongoose's
Ships of the Elves, published shortly after their original
Seas of Blood book; I remember there being a pretty decent looking ship on the cover of that book...) In any case, given the subject matter, I think Brent did as cool a cover as was technically possible.
One final note about the cover: my copy was warped again, making that an even 60% of my copies of the five (to date) "Classic Play" books to arrive that way. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I hope Mongoose finds it and fixes it soon, as a warped book is not the best inducement to get somebody to pick it up and flip through it in the first place...
The interior artwork consists of 63 different black-and-white illustrations by 9 different artists. Despite that, there are probably well over 100 pictures in the book. How is that possible, you ask? By frequent use of the same couple of "filler art" pieces, used over and over again to fill up what would otherwise be a chunk of white space at the bottom of a page. There's a compass diagram made with swords that must show up a good dozen times by itself; the other pieces are a couple different treasure chest pieces. Still, as irritating as that can be, the rest of the artwork (that shows up once each) is pretty good; I especially like the ship drawings by Philip Renne - not only does he draw a side view of each ship, but a deck-by-deck plan (with grid lines and a scale even, making them useful for mapping!). However, the major failing of
Book of the Sea, artwork-wise, is that
none of the new monsters is illustrated. In my opinion, any illustrated book that has a
Monster Manual section really ought to make having pictures of the monsters the number one priority of the art budget. There are some interesting new monsters in this book, and it's a pity that we'll never see what they look like.
Book of the Sea is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: explaining what's in this book and the whole concept of the "Classic Play" series
- Seafarers & Crew: 2 seafaring character classes (pirate and mariner), types of crewmen (with sample stats), and 17 new feats
- Ship Design: rules for creating a ship design of your own
- Equipment & Weaponry: various types of equipment and weaponry (including magic and mundane enhancements)
- Ships of the Sea: deck plans and game stats for 17 different ships
- Travel by Sea: rules for making ability and skill checks at sea, navigation, travel speed, maneuvering, weather, visibility, seaworthiness, luck, events on ship, and conditions on board
- Rum and the Lash: rules on discipline, morale, mutiny, and loyalty
- Ports: port sizes and populations, and features and ships present at various ports
- Trade: trading networks (including a sample network), trade and bargaining, typical prices for goods, and game stats for 9 different merchants
- Battles at Sea: a revised version of the Open Mass Combat System with rules for sea warfare, plus the unit roster and ship roster
- Ship's Log: keeping a log of events at sea
- Naval Magic: how some specific spells work differently (or not at all) at sea, the sea druid, weather magic, and 39 new spells and 38 magic items for those who ride above the waves
- Prestige Classes: 11 new prestige classes (9 of them with 5 levels, 2 of them with 10 levels)
- The Undersea Realms: undersea civilizations and races (merfolk, aquatic elves, high cetaceans, locathah, selkie, tritons, with rules for playing them as PCs), evil undersea races (maleficent, krakens, abyssans, sahuagin, sea hags, merrow, scrags, water nagas, and aquatic vampires), and the standard PC races of the surface
- Underwater Adventuring: rules of buoyancy, underwater distance (including a chart for determining three-dimensional distance), depth and pressure, light and visibility, underwater travel times and navigation, various types of underwater terrain (with appropriate encounters in each), special abilities and skills by character class, underwater effects on certain skills, and underwater combat
- Underwater Equipment: 20 underwater weapons, 14 types of armor, and 51 pieces of useful equipment (including underwater mounts)
- Undersea Magic: casting spells underwater, how some specific spells work differently (or not at all) underwater, and 28 underwater spells
- Bestiary: 11 new monsters for use in aquatic adventures (one of which is a template)
- Sea Campaigns: naval campaign ideas, different flavors of aquatic gaming, some important points to consider about sea-based adventures, and underwater campaigns
- Random Naval Encounter Generator: 32 charts allowing you to build an entire sea-based adventure simply by rolling dice, with three step-by-step examples
- Ship Design Worksheet: one-page tracking sheet with your ship's game statistics
- Crew Sheet: one-page tracking sheet with your crew's game statistics
- Log Book: one-page tracking sheet of your running ship's log (so you can keep track of morale, loyalty, etc.)
Once again, Gareth proves that he's got plenty of good gaming ideas (having recently written both
The Slayer's Guide to Titans and
Book of Dragons). Furthermore, he has a clear writing style and a good grasp of humor. There are many very useful bits in
Book of the Sea: rather than just crank out ship after ship (and Mongoose has already published three books of ship designs:
Ships of War,
Ships of the Elves, and
Ships of the Goblinoids), he creates do-it-yourself rules so you can build your own ship plans - then plots out the basic hulls and most common options to make your own ship design easier. He then follows this with rules for various weapons and assorted equipment you might want to add to your ship, and even designs a tracking sheet to write it all down. Bravo! I liked his new feats and spells (well, most of them, anyway - I'll pick out the ones I had problems with in a paragraph or two), and most of his new prestige classes as well. The new magic (and mundane) items all seem eminently logical for sea-based adventuring; there's very little he hasn't thought of. (I especially liked the
lantern of flame, and the fact that it can be recharged by quenching nonmagical fires. Very cool.) He sprinkles the whole book with suggestions and hints and constantly comes up with little things that you might not have considered when deciding to run aquatic adventures. Finally, the fiction blurbs that run throughout the book are snippets from a continuing story that covers the whole gamut of the various topics in the book. Again, this is all very well done.
However, once again, there are some serious problems with this book that drag down its overall quality. Let's start (as I often do) with the quality of the proofreading and editing. In short: this is neither proofreader Mark Lewin's nor editor Richard Neale's best work.
Book of the Sea is riddled with typos of all types: spelling errors, missing words, incorrect grammar, half-hearted renaming of terminology, copy-and-paste errors, and an overall poor job at the creature stats. I know I harp on proofreading and editing enough to make some people tired of hearing about it, so I'll just name some of the worse offenses. First of all, "sahuagin" is spelled "suhuagin" more times than not, over a dozen times at the very least (although once, just for variety, they gave "sihuagin" a try). It's been close to a year since the 3.5 rules came out, and yet we're
still getting references to the Pick Pocket skill! Apparently the mariner class was originally called the sailor class (as it was in
Seas of Blood), but while they changed the title in the header, they left "sailor" throughout the rest of the book. Furthermore, the mariner/sailor has a spell-like ability ("Signs & Portents," making this the third different way Mongoose has used this phrase, naming their monthly magazine and a Babylon 5 sourcebook after it as well) that he gains at 16th level, yet the second paragraph states that "upon reaching 6th level, the seer gets his visions more clearly and more often." I'm assuming somewhere in Mongoose's vast gaming library there's a "seer" prestige class from which this whole passage was swiped. Seahorses (by which Gareth means "
giant seahorses") and selkie are mentioned numerous times before the stats for them show up (and even then, in a humorous typo incident, we're informed that a giant seahorse uses the stats of a regular
house with some minor tweaking). I don't know what Gareth was thinking about (maybe crabmen?), but locathah have neither armor plating nor teeth. (From the
Monster Manual: "Locathahs lack teeth, claws, and natural weapons..." From
Book of the Sea: "The locathah are more fish or lobster than humanoid. Their mouths are filled with needle-sharp teeth...") I won't go into tedious detail on all of the rest of the errors I found; suffice it to say that it took two full pages of legal paper (both sides of each) to jot them all down.
However, I do tend to be picky when it comes to NPC and monster stats, so I'll point out all of the errors I found. For those wishing to use these NPCs/monsters in your game (and many of them are pretty interesting), I'd make the following changes:
- p. 95, Galia Crowsfields: Hit Dice should be 3d6-3, not 3d6 (she has a Con 8, and thus -1 to each Hit Die)
- p. 95, Arth of the Red Door: His greatsword attack should be 2d6+2, not 2d6+4 (as it's listed in the "Attack" line) or 2d6+3 (as it's listed in the "Full Attack" line)
- p. 96, Subtle Jacques: As an Exp7, he should have 7d6 HD (24 hp), not 6d6 HD (21 hp).
- p. 96, Althion Winterscythe: As an Exp8, he should have 8d6 HD (28 hp), not 7d6 HD (24 hp)
- p. 96, Lord Hand: With an 8 Con, his HD should be 9d6-9 (24 hp), not 9d6 (30 hp)
- p. 163, Selkie Seal: Grapple should be +2, not +1 (+1 BAB, +1 Str). Slam attack should be +3, not +4 (+1 BAB, +2 Dex, Weapon Finesse).
- p. 198, Abyssans: Touch AC should be 11, not 12. Flat-footed AC should be 16, not 15.
- p. 200, Abyssan Rider Medusa: Dagger attacks should be at +10 melee, not +8 (+8 BAB, +2 Dex, Weapon Finesse). Fort DC for poison should be 15, not 14 (due to the +2 HD the creature gains from the template)
- p. 201, Abyssan God-Eater: HD should be 10d8+20 (65 hp), not 10d8+40 (85 hp). Touch AC should be 9, not 12. Base Attack should be +10, not +13 (it's a 10 HD outsider). Man'o'war attack should probably be at +12 melee, not +15 (although there are no Skills or Feats listed for this creature, so there might have been some feat intended that would alter the calculation). The "Organization" line is wrong, having been copy-and-pasted from the "Abyssans" entry. (The first clue here is that it includes "and one godeater" in the hunting party of 6-10!)
- p. 202, Arcane Jellyfish: Base Attack should be +6, not +5.
- p. 203, Armour Crab: HD should be 3d10+9 (25 hp), not 3d10+9 (17 hp). Flat-footed AC should be 20, not 10. Claw damage should be 1d6+4, not 1d6+5. Crabs don't have bones, so its armor spikes should be called "chitinous."
- p. 204, Godhusk: Base Attack should be +30, not +28. Touch AC should be 7, not 9. Grapple should be +48, not +53. Claw attack should be +39 melee, not +43 (BAB +30, Str +10, size -2, Weapon Focus +1). Bite attack should be +33, not +38 (at least in the "Full Attack" line; the "Attack" line is correct).
- p. 207, Dancer Shark: HD should be 8d8+8 (44 hp), not 8d8+5 (51 hp).
- p. 207, Shadow Siren: HD should be 4d12 (26 hp), not 4d12 (51 hp). flat-footed AC should be 10, not 13.
- p. 208, Thrashing Serpent: Tail slap attack should be +25 melee, not +29 (BAB +14, Str +15, size -4). "Special Attack" line calls it "Thrash," but the write-up calls it "Waves."
- p. 210, Yellow Ninja Squid: There's no such thing as a "magical animal" creature type; that should be "magical beast." HD should be 1d10 (5 hp), not 1d10 (6hp). Dagger attack should be +1 melee, not +4 (BAB +1, size +1, Str -1). Shortspear attack should be +5 melee, not +4 (BAB +1, size +1, Dex +3). As for the PC stats, first of all, can a yellow ninja squid talk? The write-up doesn't say; you wouldn't expect a squid to be able to talk, and if it doesn't it wouldn't make a very good PC. The Dexterity bonus should be +6, not +2, and it should also have a +2 Charisma bonus.
Then there were the things that just seemed outright silly, including the final levels of some of the classes and prestige classes. I was pleased to see Gareth add a 20-level Pirate core character class; I was puzzled, though, why a high-level pirate suddenly manifests the Water domain spells, and downright flabbergasted that these "non-spells" not only bypass spell resistance completely, but also work perfectly fine in antimagic spells and cannot be interrupted. Does that sound like something a pirate should be able to do? As another example, the Master Mariner prestige class is a perfectly reasonable character type, doing all the normal stuff you'd expect an expert seaman to be able to do, and then, at 5th level, this thoroughly nonmagical character can suddenly
plane shift or
teleport his ship. No explanation is given for this sudden burst of magical ability; it's just...there. Likewise, the Legendary Captain prestige class is thoroughly nonmagical - as you'd expect - until all of a sudden he starts manifesting
heroes' feasts and
miracle spells! As a final example in the "what in the world?" category, one of the new feats, Spellwash, grants a +2 luck bonus to saving throws with continuing effects by "using the magic-dampening properties of seawater." Okay, I realize this is a fantasy game, and I realize that we're not supposed to think too hard about some of the aspects of the game, but I really don't think internal consistency is too much to ask for. Why is it that seawater's "magic-dampening properties" don't come into play for the underwater races that cast spells? Heck, Gareth even provides us with 28 new spells (very well thought out ones, I might add) that were specifically designed to work underwater. So, why do these spells work if seawater is inherently magic-dampening? I think I'm deleting Spellwash from my campaign's potential new feats, and making some of the 5-level prestige classes only 4 levels to crop out some of the nonsense.
I have one final complaint to note, and once again it's a pretty important one in a book of this size:
Book of the Sea has no index. This is unfortunate, as the sheer size of the book (256 pages) and the fact that similar material is found scattered throughout (the surface spells are in one chapter and the underwater spells in another; surface and underwater feats aren't in the same place, etc.) makes an index less of a luxury and more of a necessity. The fact that much of the material in the same section (the feats, the prestige classes, the ships, almost everything except the spells) isn't alphabetized doesn't help matters, either. I think this is a major disservice to the consumer, and it would be a major step in the right direction if Mongoose would throw an index up on their website in the Free Downloads section. (This isn't the first time this has happened, either.)
So, what we're left with is a book filled with some pretty cool ideas (Gareth's 30-chart random naval encounter system is a work of art, marred only by a few instances where there's no indicator as to what die you should roll; not all of them look like d20 rolls), some helpful suggestions, and some really lousy editing and poor layout choices. I put this firmly at the 3-star (Average) level: it's not bad, but it sure could have been a whole lot better.
