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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2010990" data-attributes="member: 1129">Lords of the Night Liches is the second book by Bottled Imp Games. This one takes the lich and expands it in numerous ways, adding new ideas, locations and game mechanics to overlay almost any standard D20 fantasy game.There are somethings right off the bat I didn't like. The previous book Vampires, had some fancy fonts but most was standard type. Not so with this book. The book has a light feel to it, like it's been padded. That may not be true at all, but it looks it. I'm used to books like Call of Cthulhu with densely packed pages that are often hard to read. Not so here.My second problem is a personal one but one that effected my reading of the whole book. The names. The names used for different things are far too standard and should've been made more exotic. For example, there is a group of beings older than the gods who use power called the Arcana. They are the organization known as the Guild of Wizards. Some have the power to alter reality through thoughts using Sorcerae. See what I mean? It sounds like standard D&D terms but because they're not, it has the potential to cause a lot of confusion, just like some of the generic names of NPC classes do. “He appears to be a stout warrior.” “Now is that warrior as a fighter type or warrior as a warrior?”The book uses a lot of templates. Liches go through different stages and have different specialties. Now the standard for almost any template these days is an example. Because the templates here may stack on top of one another and are ranked, examples would've made this section easier to use. The perfect thing would've been one character taken through several stages of lich hood with changes noted in each stat block.The last problem I had is similar to the previous one in that the details are light. Sure, the story is great, the ideas are sound, but there aren't enough examples and game stats for important characters to make the book more useful. The d20 system isn't Vampire. I want stats for the powerful characters. In some ways, I need those stats. Just as I noted on Anger of Angels that it's nice to have some background and roleplaying information on the higher powered angels, without the stats, it's really difficult to picture how they fit into your own setting. How would they far against Orcus? How would they handle fighting a god's avatar? No help on that front.Outsider of those issues, the book is a strong offering. To me, there book has values in three areas. The first is that it's good campaign material. There is a war taking place on a higher plane between two vast powers, the Guild of Wizards, members of the Arcane, ancient entities from a higher reality who represent reality, and the Void, a thing of darkness and despair. Those work out perfectly in almost any campaign as they can be layered onto a standard campaign with hardly any change. It's a secret war for the most part so players shouldn't know about it but when introduced to it, will they be able to influence once side or the other? The ideas are there ripe for the taking and range from high fantasy to horror.The next thing I've been using is the locations. Because the Guild of Mages originated from a primal or truer reality, they come from the Spectral Plane. This place is no longer the safe haven it once was and has fallen into disrepair. In many ways, it reminded me of the mini-plane in The Wheel of Time that the spellcasters used to travel from point A to point B, fraught with danger and darkness. The plane isn't all fallen though and there are special places where those touched by the Arcane can go and empower themselves or simply hide from the enemy.Now since they had to leave their home behind, they have another, the City of Lost Souls or Kethak, located deep in the Ash Plane. The city was designed by Ed Bourelle and done by Jason Sawyer. In other words, it looks great. The inhabitants of the city range from the long dead, to those undead which make the place their home. One thing I thought of instantly that this city would be good for is finding an dead inhabitant that worships some forgotten god whose lore is needed again.On the down side, there are not enough details are made of the city in individual terms. All of the major locations have been covered so people can go to the Fortress of Ash or the Home of the Keepers. The ash plane also has details and even has inhabitants like the Ash Born, known as the Valiari. Their special abilities are mainly of use on the Ash Plane as it is a dangerous location but should be useful for those games that need a guide to that bleak land.The last thing the book offers is a new system of magic that is layered onto standard magic. This reminded me of Primal Order with it's Primal Energy. You still have all of your standard things, but you get this in addition to that. These systems range form special abilities and feats needed to manipulate the powers to the various templates that are touched by the power.For the templates, there are numerous options to examine. The whole concept of these 'Arcane' Liches is that they strive to protect reality. This doesn't make them good so much as it makes them neutral, trying to save themselves and the world. The liches start off as Death Touched and progress through four more stats until they get to Spectral. Each type is a template with powers sometimes stacking except for armor class, damage reduction and turn resistance bonuses. The start of the path, as Death Touched, isn't your standard in that the character is still alive, and even lives a bit through the Living Dead phase, but soon goes into death.Now as they go through the various stages, they have specialties they can choose.  These range from Mors Lich, who master knowledge of the undead, to Artifex Liches, masters of crafting a specialized golem. That's what part of the problem is though. It would require a lot of work to separate the material that uses Arcane magic from the various templates, spells, feats, and arcane rituals themselves, and still keep the balance and flavor or the material. In some ways, I wonder if with the emphasis on showing how things can be done via class as opposed to template, if prestige classes might not have been a better route?Thankfully, there are some limits on what the casters can do with their advanced powers. Part of that is based on the fact that the Arcane points they get are limited. Part of it is based on  insanity you risk when using such power. See the human mind can only take so much power and the very transformation into a lich gives you some insanity and using such power frivolously will give you even more. The system here works well with the material, but could've been expanded to work with standard d20 rules. Each insanity is ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 with descriptions of what the character is like when plagued with such dark delusions.One thing that Lords of the Night does well is presentation. The text is easy to read and looks good on the page. The art is done by some of the industry's heavy hitters and looks great. It's too bad that game mechanics aren't included along with that material, but for the GM looking for ambiance and visual cues, this book delivers. It is missing a table of contents but does have a glossary and a brief index. About the only thing that looks off internally is the use of the outside name holder for chapter headers as it's big and in black and white scale, ugly. The book runs for $21.95 and at 128 pages, is now a standard in the d20 industry.The Lords of the Night Liches provides another layer to your campaign in almost every way. You have new locations to explore, you have new entities to interact with, and you have new foes to face. For those GMs interested in making their games more epic in scope and doing the work on the Arcane side, the book is well worth the investment.</blockquote>

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