It’s time for another break from the standard d20 reviews to look at another Ennies product, The Slayers d20. This book does double duty as it’s both a sourcebook for the first three seasons of the Slayers anime in addition to covering all the races, classes, skills, feats and a new spell system to recreate the high power of the Slayers series.
The first half of the book covers most of the mechanical aspects of the game. Unlike many fantasy settings, this anime series doesn’t rely on elves and dwarves, but instead, has beastmen, dragons, chimeras, copies, half-demons, and other creatures as possible player races. One of the biggest differences between these base races and a standard campaign is that there are several templates that players can take. For example, the half-golem provides a character with improved armor class, damage reduction, and immunity to poison and disease as well as a bonus +4 to starting strength.
Many of the classes look familiar, but they’re different. It’s important to note that while the book notes that this is compatible with other popular d20 System Games, that it’s only compatible in the sense that it’s using the d20 engine. Take a look at the rogue in this book and you’ll note that while they have most of the same abilities of the Player’s Handbook rogue, they have d8 hit dice.
The warrior, while similar to the fighter in that they gain bonus feats, also has more skill points, and gains two special abilities, style and judge opponent. The former is a bonus the character gains when using one of the ‘classic’ fighting styles like single weapon, two-weapon fighting, weapon and shield, thrown weapons or crossbows, the latter, provides the character with an idea of how powerful an enemy is.
Many of the special abilities common to the characters from the anime however, are more often found in the prestige classes. A wide range of PrCs includes some that are more advanced and specialized versions of the core classes, like the Swordsman over the Warrior, or the Cleric over the Priest, while others help increase overall abilities like the Sorcerer over the Witch/Wizard. With the wide mix of game material presented here, a GM could easily recreate most of the abilities common to the series with the proper mix of levels and items.
Now the spellcasting of the world is a bit different. There are four types of magic, common, black (sorcery), elemental (shamanism), and white (cleric). Different classes gain different abilities with each of the fields. You have spell slots and spells take up a different number of slots depending on their power. There are no levels though so you could take a lot of weaker spells or a few select spells.
At lower levels though, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be taking too many powerful spells. See, to cast the spell, you have to make a spellcasting DC check. Sure, you can call out the name of the spell or even call out the name and perform an incantation, providing a nice bonus (+5 each) to your roll, but some of the better spells have a very high DC. Another problem when casting spells is that you suffer drain in the form of nonlethal damage. The higher the DC on the spell, the more drain you suffer. Applying a metamagic feat increases the spell DC so makes the spell more draining.
Depending on how well you cast the spell, you might suffer only ½ base drain but the good thing, is that even if you fail, you might still be able to finish the spell if you make a control check. Sure, it may make you fatigued and double the base drain, but if you really need to cast a spell, it’s a good thing to have. There are several examples of spellcasting provided so that the reader has a solid idea on how the spells work.
Because this isn’t a standard d20 game, there are some interesting things going on here. For example, you can use opposites to cancel each other of fight fire with fire. When two of the same spells collide, they detonate with twice the power so if you want to avoid getting hit with a fireball, just make sure your fireball hits hers well before it gets to you.
A simple example would be the popular fireball. It takes one spell slot, is on more than one spell list, and has a base DC of 30. The spell itself is pretty much the standard fireball in that it’s reflex save for half with a maximum cap of 10d6. The popular spells form the series, like dragon slave, are a bit more powerful. But then again, it’s only on the sorcery list, has a base DC of 50, and takes three spell slots. It does 2d6 points of damage per caster level with no maximum damage cap and effects a 100-ft.-radius spread. Don’t get caught by that.
Combat in Slayers is similar to standard d20 rules but it is based on anime so that are some suggestions to capture that feeling. For example, characters have a defensive bonus because they don’t wear a lot of armor. If you develop signature attacks, you gain a small bonus to the attack and damage rolls, similar to describing in detail an attack in the game Exalted. Spells and special attacks destroy a lot of things in this world, and that’s reflected in the break DC’s which are lower than in a standard d20 setting. Of course no anime would be complete without massive amounts of knock back or hordes of faceless foes. In the former case, if you take more damage in one blow than your Constitution score, you can be knocked back and in the latter, it recommends giving such nameless foes only one or two hit points per hit dice to speed up those fights.
There are other bits here and there that help add to the flavor. For example, there are rules for psychological attacks to cause things like embarrassment or confusion even as things like money are glossed over. After all, how often do we see the characters running around looking just for gold? It’s more of a story element than an actual concern, much like d20 Modern but without the rules for it.
When running such a campaign, the GM should read over the tips provided in the book. See, the Slayers world is one in which comedy and drama walk hand in hand. People are always falling over each other, stereotypes of dumb swordsman are true, and the main heroes are often greedy and inconsiderate of others even as they’re willing to die to protect them.
For those interested in the Slayers itself, the book acts as a good springboard to start off with. It includes an episode by episode breakdown of the three seasons of the Slayers, as well as statistics for all the major characters for each of season. Official and fan web sites are listed along with a list of credits for all of the characters. Locations are noted with some background, but these are more of a listing. For example, Old Sairaag “These are the ruins of the prior foundation of Sairaag, which was destroyed long ago. Rezo kept a secret laboratory here.” Good for those looking for trivia, but not necessarily for those looking to run long term campaigns who want maps and other important details.
The book includes monsters common to the anime. For example, we have berserkers alongsite with beetle people. A brief listing of monsters from the MM is included so that GM’s are limited to the few pages here. Some of these creatures are super powerful. Take the Noble Mazoku, the rules of the Mazoku universe. They clock in at a CR of 30. Others like the Orcs, are based solely on class levels.
A nice seven-page index helps wrap things up and provides further utility. Add this to the two-page table of contents, and you should have no problem navigating through the book. After a few pages of ads, we have a very detailed character sheet. It includes a nice thing, an advancement tracker, that has a breakdown for starting ability stores, hit points and a level breakdown that tracks hit points gained, ability score changes, feats gained and skill ranks gained. Pretty vital for those who multi-class and don’t keep track of their skill points. Another vital page for this setting is the spell casting sheet with four separate spell trackers for those multi-class characters.
Overall Slayers d20 does some things great. This is another case where a point based system like the Tri-Stat might be a little better at handling the high end play though. While it’s easy enough to note that to replicate the characters from the series, that you just start all the characters off at a CR of 20, either through class or template progression, that’s not really stated in the book. In a point based system, it’s a little easier to just recommend a different starting base and is often less trouble as you don’t have all the little level dependent variables like hit points, armor class (via defensive bonus), saving throws and number of spell slots. More maps of the world would’ve also made usingthe material easier and perhaps some discussion of getting rid of things like attacks of opportunity to speed up combat would be great.
Those are things that have to be taken with a grain of salt though. For a d20 version, the Slayers engine allows players to capture the spell power fairly quickly and right off the bat. The art and layout are up to Guardians of Orders usual high standards, using art right from the anime series itself. Between system and encyclopedia, several full color full page illustrations are included. The price, $39.95, for a licensed anime game that’s 240 pages with full color inserts is fair.
For those looking for a resource on the Slayers anime or those looking to try something different with the d20 engine, Slayers d20 RPG is right up your ally.
