The Unholy Warrior's Handbook

[Messageboard Golem]

Last year Green Ronin's critically acclaimed Book of the Righteous introduced the holy warrior, a customizable core class that lets you build unique paladins for all the good gods of your campaign. But what of the gods of evil? Surely they are not without their devoted champions, their anti-paladins? Enter the Unholy Warrior, a towering figure of depravity and unspeakable evil. He wields fire and sword in the name of dark masters, spreading blood and terror in equal measure. The Unholy Warrior's Handbook gives you everything you need to introduce this core class to your campaign, including prestige classes and feats, magic items and spells, and mounts and minions. The perfect complement to the Book of the Righteous or the Book of Fiends, the Unholy Warrior's Handbook takes an unflinching look at evil's most dedicated servants.

 

[JoeGKushner]

In many ways, the Unholy Warrior follows Fang & Fury in being another by the numbers sourcebook, this time in the Master Class series.

The book starts with the Unholy Warrior core class. It shares the paladin's hit dice, base attack bonus, spell and saving throw progressions. Where it differs is that it's based on the Holy Warrior class presented in The Book of the Righteous. Instead of paladin abilities, the Unholy Warrior gains abilities based on the domains of its master. Unlike standard clerical domains which grant an ability and a list of spells, the Unholy Warrior's domain gifts are martial in nature.

For example, you could have Darkness and Wrath and get powers like Dismiss Light where natural light within 60 feet of the unholy warrior is extinguished or enhanced move, granting the user an extra +5 to movement. They also gain rebuke undead, a Dark Ally or mount, and a Gift of Darkness, which varies according to their master. One thing that may not sit right with some is that the unholy warrior is a dedicated calling and outside of certain PrCs, including those in this book and the Black Guard, there is no multi-classing for this character.

In addition to pure mechanics, role playing information on why they adventure, how they get along with other classes, background and alignment information are provided. Sample characters are listed.

The prestige classes include:

Angel Hunter, a ranger-unholy warrior with a thirst for killing angels. Of course the
Avatar's handbook is referenced here as an excellent source of material. (Guess they're not selling enough of it based on it's class utility...).

Champion of the Dark Seven, a master of the seven deadly sins who can customize his powers by selecting the sins at different levels, granting each sin a different strength.

Knight of Bedlam: Think of a Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Knight and you're on the right track. Even includes a mutation table.

Order's Tyrant: A lawful evil or neutral knight whose rigid believe in law grants them them resistance to the forces of chaos as well as the ability to smite such chaos and spellcasting powers appropriate to the cause.

Each PrC includes mid and high level examples so that GMs have instance NPC stats right away. No background is provided which makes these stats perfect for almost any setting.

Chapter Two provides the full listing of the Domain Special Abilities. With over twenty domains, there are a lot of abilities to look through. The good news is that this allows a high level of customization missing from the core paladin group and found in the holy warrior in the Book of the Righteous.

New feats are introduced in chapter three. Most of them look right in terms of power and ability but some may stretch the limit. Brimstone Death summons demons from your body when you die. It's a cool thing and insures that you stay dead, but really ,it's only going to be used by NPCs for the most part and acts as high level summoning spell, perhaps a little inappropriate for a feat as opposed to just a story element. Evil's Champion is another one that might be too powerful were it not for the prerequisite of having a spell resistance of 10 to take it. The feat grants you immunity to spells with the 'evil' descriptor and a +4 bonus to Charisma skill checks with evil NPCs. The latter part of this feat is worthy of a feat in and of itself, forget the spell immunity aspect.

Most of the feats aren't quite so powerful though. Backstabber lets you attack from shadows with an automatic critical threat with an extra 1d6 of damage added to the critical hit. Blasphemer causes those channeling positive energy to make a concentration check of 5 + your unholy warrior levels or fail to channel.

Chapter Four introduces new spells and items. The unholy warrior has the standard paladin four level spell list and has a good range of spells from invisibility to magic weapon, from ghoul touch to nondetection. The new spells aren't listed for other classes, but are noted in the spell description. For example, we see that Expedite Poison is a Drd 3, Rgr 1, UnW 2 spell that causes the secondary effect to onset sooner.

New items includes the standard evil weapons like Nightshard, a black greatsword that in an unholy warrior's hands does extra damage against good aligned foes and even more damage to all foes under moonlight, starlight or in total darkness.

My favorite part is Chapter Five, Dark Masters. The evil gods from Book of the Righteous get their own unholy warrior orders like the Ember Knights of Asmoedus, the Brothers of the Savage Storm for Canarak, the Edocates of Thelloss and the Black Myrmidons of Naran. Each one comes with titles, requirements, additional class skills, domains, gifts, spells, specific dark allies, conduct and associates. It's an excellent section for those who wanted more in the Book of the Righteous and slots right into that mythology. Even the off shot cults are listed with Maal being in charge or the Cult of the Bloody Blade and Darmon ruling over the Cult of the Possession.

Now some may care nothing for said mythology and want to know how to go about granting their own gods evil warriors. There's a clerical to unholy warrior domain conversion chart, as well as additional information on serving demons, devils and deamons with the game information in terms of skills, domains, gifts, spells, dark ally and alignment restrictions. Want to serve Mammon? You take Greed and Lust. Want to serve Orcus? That's be Gluttony and Undeath.

Chapter Six, Mounts and Minions, provides the stats for different potential mounts for unholy warriors. The hippogriff for example, has a standard, fiendish and half- fiend listed but perhaps the most impressive is the Mammoth of Baal, a huge creature that looks like a elephant on steroids.

Another good role playing chapter with game mechanics is Chapter Seven, Fallen & Redeemed. Ever wonder what happens when a low level paladin falls? It's a lot different than when a higher level one falls. How about the experience point cost for an unholy warrior to find redemption? All covered with a template, the redeemed, that takes a little of the sting out of the experience point cost.

Layout is standard two columns. Editing is fairly good for the most part. About the only thing that sticks out is in one of the Gift of Darkness listings, the d is small on one and capitalized on the others. Another minor one, having redeemed spelled redeemded for a chapter heading. Very minor issues like that. The art is top notch by some of today's best illustrators like James Ryamn, Storn Cook, Toren Atkson, Britt Martin and David Griffith. If nothing else, you owe it to yourself to not only check out the samples on the Green Ronin website, but also look through the book when you're in the store. James Ryamn does a great job of bringing to life the Ember Knight of Asmodeus and David Griffith's Vestigial Twin illustration is more than creepy, it's downright disturbing.

One of the failures of the book is incorporation. Nothing is mentioned of Freeport. What would those who worship that unspeakable deity have for such warriors? Where's the character folio extras? While the Avatar book is mentioned several times as a resource, what about the Death Knight core class introduced in the Secret College? It's nice that the Black Guard is contrasted to the unholy warrior, but if the necromancer is mentioned as one of the allies, I imagine that Green Ronin is talking about their product, the same one with the Death Knight. Where's the death knight information then?

My issues with the book are minor ones and more of a wish list than real problems in most cases. Game balance is a gremlin that no two people will agree on but I've always felt it better to under power than over.

The book provides a solid class with some abilities that if given unto players without supervision, could lead to issues. GMs wishing to expand their pantheon options from the Book of the Righteous will find this a complete fit while those looking for another variant evil core class now have another option. The Unholy Warrior's Handbook will see more use from the GM side than the players but some campaigns based off of the Book of Vile Darkness or utilizing the Fang & Fury book, Assassins' Handbook, and the Secret College of Necromancy, could easily run out an all evil campaign with little difficulty.

 

[GameWyrd]

The Unholy Warrior’s Handbook is part of Green Ronin’s Master Class series but the book’s connection to the widely successful and hugely popular The Book of the Righteous can not be understated. The Book of the Righteous introduced the Holy Warrior and gamers quickly adopted the class. If the Holy Warriors serve the good gods then surely there are Unholy Warriors for the vile gods too? Yes, there are, and they’ve got a US$16.95, 80-paged, supplement all to themselves.

It doesn’t happen right at the start of the book (that’s were the rules for this core class are) but the Handbook does explain the difference between the unholy warrior and blackguard. Blackguards work for themselves and do evil. Unholy warriors serve a dark master. Blackguards can serve a higher power but they don’t need to in order to use their powers; the unholy warrior is dependant on his evil patron for his. The unholy warrior is a core class. The blackguard is an ideal prestige class for the warrior and the Handbook offers some more prestige class choices.

The Unholy Warrior class is carefully constructed. Its a warrior class, duh, but has access to spells (eventually) as well. Unholy Warriors are granted domains by the powers they worship and a Dark Ally at 6th level. The Dark Ally will be something like a fiendish warhorse but it’s up to the unholy warrior to decide exactly what. Furthermore the ally is a tool, something to use, and so there’s no empathic link between rider and mount. If you’re tempted to use the Unholy Warrior as a prestige class then there’s a quick mention of suitable requirements.

If an unholy warrior core class appeals to you then the prestige classes will be sinfully tempting. The Angel Hunter is a crazy sicko but frightfully good at their self-appointed quest. The Champion of the Dark Seven gets to be my favourite prestige class in the book and from many recent supplements too. The class is tied to the plane of Gehenna but essentially you pick a sin and enjoy different benefits based on it. If you focus on lust (and why not?) then enjoy a boost to your Charisma score but suffer from a slight profane penalty to effective charisma score for spell casting. The Knight of Bedlam has a large table of mutations to bounce dice for. In opposition to the chaos of bedlam there’s the Order’s Tyrant prestige class too. Nice.

There’s a load of special abilities in the book, so many, in fact, that they have chapter two all to themselves. Why so many? These special abilities are granted to the unholy warrior in conjunction with the two domains the warrior’s patron grants them. An unholy warrior with Wrath on her portfolio will have Rage and Enhanced move at level one and then Rabid Frenzy at level two.

There are new feats, of course, they chase up the special abilities and appear in chapter three. The Vestigial Twin feat gives the unholy warrior a living twin inside his own body, one that shares his own flesh; it’s rather like a horribly perverted Siamese twin. The Vestigial Twin has intelligence, wisdom, charisma and an ego score of its own but no means of self-propulsion. The feats and special abilities seem about right for the unholy warrior. They are powerful because they give the class more options but the game balance within the book is tight. Game balance outside the bounds of the book depends entirely on what you’re comparing it against but it does well against likely options such as The Avatar’s Handbook.

The Unholy Warrior class has a spell list. There are lots of new spells to support it. You don’t need the Book of the Righteous or any of Green Ronin’s Armies of Hell series to make full use of the list. If you have these books or want to add blackguard spells then you’re advised to add them yourself.

You don’t need the The Book of the Righteous to use Dark Masters either, the chapter devoted to those the unholy warriors might serve, but if you do have both then you’ll benefit from the combination. The chapter looks at evil powers like Asmodeus and Thellas and notes additional class skills, spells, suitable dark allies, the appropriate alignment and so on for each. If you’d rather have your unholy warrior following the edicts of an entity from Legions of Hell, another Green Ronin success, then there’s offerings here for you too.

Chapter Six looks at exotic mounts and dark minions. I think an unholy warrior would loose much of her panache if she rode into combat on the back of a horse. There’s a full-page table of quick alternatives and the level the unholy warrior would need to be to call the creature as a dark ally. Yup. A level 24 unholy warrior can ride into combat on the back of a Tarrasque. A level 26 unholy warrior will do one better and counter the charge on the back of a Fiendish Tarrasque. Ha! Despite fun on the quick list my favourite entry here comes from the section of new creatures. The Putrescent Flow is scary and rather dim witted. It’s a huge ooze the unholy warrior can ride in, making use of a specially produced bubble from the ooze to avoid the creature’s digestion. The ooze isn’t so smart, might get excited and confused and forget to render the bubble area free of its digestive juices though. Oops.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a whole chapter devoted to the Fallen and Redeemded. You can’t be a Holy Warrior, enjoy the protection of powerful angels, and then become an Unholy Warrior and expect the forces of light to do nothing. If you were a powerful holy warrior when you Fall then the Angel of Retribution, Raguel, may come deal with you himself. The chapter talks about what sort of things a fallen holy warrior, now unholy warrior, who survives this might expect. If you had any choice at all in your Fall or the dark path you walked then there’s no chance for redemption but there are a minority for which is this is possible. This is a great aspect on the Holy and Unholy Warriors for the book talk about it. You could build an entire campaign out of this sort of thing.

The Unholy Warrior is good. Er, the book-buying sort of good. I love the way the Handbook straddles so many of Green Ronin’s products and does so without the reader needing to have any of them. The Unholy Warrior is one of those classes that seem to generate plot around them and the Handbook has ensured that the game mechanics are as slick and smooth as possible.

* This Unholy Warrior's Handbook was first posted at GameWyrd.

 

[Clint]

Great review, it makes me want to buy the book. So, what kept the book from being perfect (or in ENWorld grading, Superb)?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

The Unholy Warrior's Handbook is a Master Class release from Green Ronin, detailing a new 20-level class, the Unholy warrior.

The Unholy Warrior's Handbook is an 80-page mono softcover product costing $16.95. Space usage is pretty good with no white space, good margins, and an average-size font (the diabolic-style font for the titles and sub-titles was a nice touch). Artwork is appropriate to the text and is generally of high quality, including the front cover showing an unholy warrior astride his demonic steed, illuminated by fire and lightning. The product is written with intelligence and maturity, and editing seems good (though the chapter title 'Fallen & Redeemded' caught the eye).

Introduction
The Unholy Warrior is designed to be the dark shadow of the Holy Warrior class put forward in Green Ronin's The Book of the Righteous, which provided a toolkit class to create variant paladins - the Unholy Warrior's Handbook is designed to create anti-paladins in the same manner. Interestingly, the introduction also mentions the forthcoming product 'Hordes of Gehenna', which details neutral evil fiends, or daemons.

Chapter One: Unholy Warriors
This chapter presents the 20-level Unholy Warrior class, presented in standard core class format - info on adventures, characteristics, alignment, religion, background, races, and other classes. The basic idea behind the Unholy Warrior is that they serve evil - usually evil gods, demons, devils, etc. - and they gain their powers from these dark masters. Hit die, spells, BAB and save progressions, and skills are all as the Paladin (except spells are based on Cha). The main change is in the class features, which work in a similar way to the Holy Warrior class from The Book Of The Righteous. At lower levels, the Unholy warrior gains domain abilities - each domain has three linked abilities (e.g. the Wrath domain has rage, enhanced move, and rabid frenzy), which the Unholy warrior gains as he progresses. The gain the ability to rebuke undead and a dark ally (e.g. fiendish warhorse - there is a sidebar detailing a template for the Dark Ally) as they progress, and every third level (starting from 5th level) they gain the class feature 'Gift Of Darkness', an evil supernatural or spell-like ability such as contagion, which increases in power or the number of times it can be used as the Unholy warrior progresses. Unholy Warriors are restricted as far as multiclassing goes, in a similar way to the Holy Warrior and Paladin. Further information is given on starting packages, ex-Unholy warriors and multiclass Unholy Warriors (including a discussion on the differences to and compatibility with the Blackguard PrC). Sample statistics are also provided for a low, mid, and high level Unholy Warrior.

Four prestige classes are offered, each with an example:
* Angel Hunter - as the name suggests, Angel Hunters specialise in killing celestials. They have good BAB, Fort and Will save progressions, and gain good attack class features against their chosen enemies such as smite celestial and turn celestials. It seems to be designed for rangers as the base class with a prerequisite for Favoured Enemy (Celestials) but a note expands the possibilities with an alternative of gaining the Track feat and some ranks in Knowledge (The Planes) instead for non-rangers.
* Champion Of The Dark Seven - champions of the seven sins - wrath, envy, lust, sloth, gluttony, greed, and pride. The champion gains a new class feature related to one of the sins for each level they gain, working their way through all seven levels of sin. Good Fort and Will save progression, average BAB. Links with a daemon of Gehenna to gain their powers.
* Knight Of Bedlam - chaotic and violent warrior, who chaotically mutates as he progresses (there is a table for random mutation rolls). Class features include detect law and smite law, and they continue to progress in spellcasting level every 3 levels starting from 1st level. Good BAB and Fort save progressions.
* Order's Tyrant - characters in power who uphold the law regardless of the suffering it might cause, can take this PrC. Good BAB, Fort and Will save progressions, and class features include smite chaos and energy resistances.

The beginning of the chapter also offers a suggestion for using the Unholy Warrior as a Prestige Class.

Chapter Two: The Power Of Evil
This chapter lists the domain-based special abilities that Unholy Warriors gain in their early levels. A table lists all the domains and their related abilities. Examples include Empower Through Consumption (an ability linked to the Gluttony domain that allows the Unholy Warrior to eat living flesh to gain bonuses to d20 rolls - very Hannibalistic!), Poison Use (as per the assassin ability in the DMG), Slave To Lust (victim becomes flatfooted and confused as they are affected by the Unholy Warrior's sexual aura), and smite good (as per the paladin ability smite evil, but reversed).

Chapter Three: Feats
25 new feats are offered in this chapter including the Item Creation feat 'Bind Celestial' which allows an evil being to force an unconscious celestial's form into a magic item, allowing the wielder to benefit from the celestial's innate abilities. Other feats include Controlled Mutation (specifically for the Knight of Bedlam PrC), Discreet Poisoner (can craft multi-stage poisons), and Reckless Attack (lower AC to gain bonus to attack, with Power Attack as a prerequisite).

Chapter Four: Spells & Items
This chapter begins by presenting the four levels of spells available to the Unholy warrior. Twelve new spells are then described, including the atmospheric Hell's Aura, a mystical cloud that surrounds the Unholy Warrior, containing the shades of damned souls and emitting screams - it gives a bonus to AC but a penalty to Listen and Move Silently. The spell Unholy Sword allows the caster to channel evil energies into a weapon making it a +5 weapon and dealing double damage against good opponents for the duration as well as giving similar effects of a protection against good spell on the weapon's wielder. There are also a number of spells that deal with lust and its effects on the spell's victim.

Six new magical items are presented, including the cursed Icons of Damnation, which tempt their bearers into one of the seven sins, and Zankar's Helmet, which oozes blood to encase the wearer in a weird armour as well as changing the alignment of the wearer towards chaotic evil, providing darkvision, glowing green eyes, and the ability to rage (or rage more).

Chapter Five: Dark Masters
This details a number of evil gods, devils, demons, daemons, and evil cults. These are the foci of worship for Unholy Warriors and it is where they gain their powers. The Evil Gods section details Asmodeus, Canarak, Thellos, and Naran - they will be familiar to those that own The Book Of The Righteous, as they are mentioned there, and complement that setting. A couple of tables detail suggested domain conversions for Unholy warriors. For each of the gods, an Unholy Warrior order is described with titles for progression in the order, additional class skills available, domains, the Gift of Darkness the deity confers, spells where applicable, guidelines for a dark ally, conduct restrictions, associates, and alignment. This template is repeated for use with the orders described that worship fiends. The section on cults discusses the nature of evil cults and the role of an unholy warrior who works within their brotherhood.

Chapter Six: Mounts And Minions
There is a restriction on the level an Unholy Warrior must be to gain certain unusual (and standard) mounts. The higher the CR of the mount, the longer the Unholy Warrior must wait to get his mount. This chapter begins with some discussion of taking these restrictions into account. A variant Hippogriff is detailed, comparing standard, fiendish, and half-fiend Hippogriffs, and giving a full-page table showing a whole range of creatures with the CR for standard, Fiendish, and Half-fiend variants, along with the base level the unholy Warrior must be to gain the Dark Ally. Evil Mounts detailed include a Large Carrion Crow, a demonic worm with a humanoid head, an evil mammoth, and a Huge putrescent ooze. New templates are provided for demonic, devilish, and daemonic creatures, as alternatives to the fiendish and half-fiend templates. The chapter ends with a discussion of the lackeys an Unholy warrior could gain and the role of Leadership for the class.

Chapter Seven: Fallen & Redeemed
The first section of this chapter deals with ex-holy warriors, who are gifted by Asmodeus for turning their back on good and freely accepting evil. Depending on the level at which the character foregoes his holy warrior status, there are a series of choices to be made by the player as to which gift is bestowed upon the character. The second section deals with ex-unholy warriors, rare characters that have come to see the light of goodness after a life of evil, and also fallen holy warriors that seek a return to goodness. XP losses and other ritualistic sacrifices are described and the redeemed character has the Redeemed template applied to him, which includes abilities such as smite evil, darkvision, energy resistance, DR, SR, and immunity to disease. CR is +2 and ECL is +4 if redeemed characters generated after 1st level rather than experiencing the losses previously described in the chapter (which even out the advantages otherwise).

Two pages of reference tables at the end of the book show the Unholy Warrior class progression, the 4 progressions for the PrCs in the book and the dark ally template.

High Points:
For those who already own and enjoy The Book Of The Righteous, this product neatly dovetails with that one. The Unholy warrior would definitely make a great villain and the options provided in the class allow a GM to tailor an NPC to her needs. I also particularly liked the option of using the Unholy Warrior as a prestige class. The PrCs were imaginative and appropriate to the product and again fit nicely in with Legions of Hell, Armies of the Abyss, and the forthcoming Hordes of Gehenna. The feats are varied and plot-orientated, lacking the usual +2/3/4 to skills and such like that demean some products. It was also a nice touch to see some discussion of redemption in such a grim product.

Low Points:
A bonus if you own and use The Book of the Righteous, but perhaps of limited use if you don't, eight pages are dedicated to Unholy warriors working for specific evil gods - however, this does give a few ideas on how to construct Unholy warrior orders for your own deities. Reading through some of the domain abilities available at lower levels to Unholy Warriors, I was a bit concerned. For example, Burst of Confusion allows the Unholy warrior to effectively cast 'confusion' once per day at 2nd level (a 4th-level spell). The stacking Sneak Attack allows the Unholy warrior access to the abilities of another class from 1st level.

Conclusion:
If you liked the toolkit idea of the Holy warrior from The Book of the Righteous, the Unholy warrior's Handbook will also please. The ideas are plot-orientated and the Unholy Warriors that can be built from the information here will make great villains. I'm personally going to use the Unholy Warrior as a prestige class and retain the idea that they gain their powers from fiends. I also need to be careful which domain abilities to allow if I want to give the PCs a fighting chance. Overall, a stimulating and thoughtful product, with ideas and rules to tempt and corrupt innocent GMs (and perhaps player of evil PCs).

 

[GameWyrd]

There's no wow factor. Nothing in the book makes me wish I'd thought of that. It is, underneath it all, just another class book.

 

[Psion]

The Unholy Warrior's Handbook

The Unholy Warrior's Handbook is part of Green Ronin's Master Class series of books dedicated to detailing new core classes of d20 System fantasy games. As the title should make obvious, the subject of The Unholy Warrior's Handbook is the unholy warrior, a champion of corruption and vice. The Unholy Warrior's Handbook is written by Robert J. Schwalb.

A First Look

The Unholy Warrior's Handbook is an 80-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $16.95. This is fairly typical for a book of this size and format.

The cover of the book is illustrated by Kyle Anderson, and depicts the silhouette of a warrior in spikey armor riding a horse with red glowing eyes.

The interior is black and white. Interior artists include Toren "Macbin" Atkinson, Britt Martin, Storn Cook, David Griffith, and James Ryman. Though most art is very good, I must say that I find the Atkinson, Griffith, and Ryman's styles have a nice synergy in this book, helping to project a moody and dark feel. Of particular not, Griffith's work is not new to d20 products, but his work here is some of the best I have seen him turn out.

The body text font is modestly sized, and line and paragraph spacing isn't quite "double spaced", but it is a bit wider than I am used to in Green Ronin products. The layout is generally clean, attractive, and easily readable.

A Deeper Look

The subject of the book, the unholy warrior, is essentially the mirror image of the holy warrior class as it appears in Green Ronin's masterpiece of religion in gaming, Book of the Righteous. Just as with that class, the unholy warrior is a well crafted and flexible class with a lot of room for player or (more likely) GM choice.

On the most basic mechanical level, the unholy warrior (like the holy warrior) resembles a paladin, with good attack bonus and fortitude save progression and limited spellcasting ability starting at 4th level. Also like the holy warrior, most of the unholy warrior's class abilities are determined by selection of the character's patron and two associated "domains". Unlike clerical domains, unholy warrior domains don't determine spell choice, but they do determine some special abilities of the unholy warrior. Unholy warrior domains include darkness, corruption, horror, hate, greed, and slowth.

Later chapters in the book spell out the exact nature of these domains as well as defining a number of "dark masters" that unholy warriors may select as patrons. These masters are drawn from the cosmology defined by prior Green Ronin works, namely the Book of the Righteous, Legions of Hell, and Armies of the Abyss. The dark master that the player or GM selects for the character defines which domains are available, defines the nature of an additional "dark blessing" ability that the unholy warrior gains at it advances, spells that are added to the standard unholy warrior spell list for that particular unholy warrior, strictures, titles, and other details associated with being in that figure's service.

The book also accommodates the possibility that the GM may have his own ideas for dark masters in his campaing. Unholy warriors have a standard "dark blessing" ability to cause disease, and, of course, the GM can define appropriate domains. The book also recognizes that you may not want unholy warriors as a core class and defines prerequisites for the class if used as a prestige class.

In addition to this basic formula, The Unholy Warrior's Handbook supports it with a variety of other supporting material. Four prestige classes are provided to craft the unholy warrior to a more particular image:

-Angel Hunter: The angel hunter is a dark warrior engaged in the ghastly pursuit of tracking down, entrapping, and slaying celestials, the servants of the good gods. Unholy warriors receive ranger-like bonuses against celestials starting at first level, and receive a number of abilities protecting them from celestials and otherwise enabling them in their battle against celestials.
-Champion of the Dark Seven: Characters who pursue this class are devoted to the concept of sin itself, as represented by the seven "Exarchs of Gehenna." The class is a seven level prestige class. At each level, the character receives a dark blessing, which the character may choose. Each of the dark blessings correspond to one of the classical "seven deadly sins."
-Knight of Bedlam: The knight of bedlam is a champion of chaos. In addition to (slow) continues spellcasting advancement, the knight of bedlam gains random mutations as well as "boons of chaos" which allow the character to reroll failed rolls.
-Order's Tyrant: At the other end of the law/choas spectrum from the knight of bedlam, order's tyrant are servants in the rigid hierarchy of hell. Order's tyrants have their own spell list and access to the clerical law domain. In addition, the class receives minor energy resistance and ability smite chaos.

All prestige classes have sample NPCs.

The book provides a selection of new feats, spells, and items most appropriate for unholy warriors. The most interesting of the new feats is possibly vestigal twin, which causes a spirit to inhabit your body and grow of its own accord. Though often helpful, this spirit has its own ego (like an item) and can be difficult to control.

Other supporting materials include creature statistics for servants and allies of unholy warriors, and rules for handling holy warriors or paladins that fall to a state of sin or unholy warriors who are redeemed.

Conclusion

Though the Unholy Warrior's Handbook is not as moody as Green Ronin's Secret College of Necromancy, it is more generally more balanced (though some things, like the damned feat, struck me as a little powerful), not subscribing to the notion that if it is evil, it's okay to be unbalanced. In being evil, it also avoids the "tacky" pratfall that Armies of the Abyss falls into, but still manages to be twisted and creative.

The book takes a fundamentally successful formula presented in Book of the Righteous for holy warriors and provides just as compelling an application for use by the forces of darkness.

Overall Grade: B+

-Alan D. Kohler