Messageboard Golem
First Post
Features the haunted history of the huckster, new feats, skills, abilities, prestige classes, and more hexes than you can shake a Dead Mans Hand at!
The Way of the Huckster
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trancejeremy
Adventurer
Way of the Huckster is a class splatbook for Deadlands d20, devoted to the Deadlands d20 equivalent of the Wizard or Sorcerer, the Huckster. It's $15, 64 pages, and has the cheap quality, recycled art, and large margins that we've come to know and love in Deadlands d20 products. The font's fairly small though, at least by Pinnacle standards.
Now bear in mind, I was somewhat familiar with the original Deadlands game, but I only had about 6-7 books for it at the most (and most of those have since been traded away). I never had the original equivalent of this.
Anyway, the book starts off with some history of Edmond Hoyle in the Deadlands universe. It seems he was in fact an occultist, who hid spells and occult lore in his book on games. This goes into how and why and is fairly interesting (at least for me). This is about 5 pages or so.
The next chapter is also pretty small and adds some new character options. Basically, 1 new feat and 2 new prestige classes, the Tempest and the Diffusionist. A Tempest is almost like a sorcerer (in terms of game fiction) in that it has an inborn magical talent. A Diffusionist is like a combination of Huckster and Mad Scientist.
Neither class makes all that much sense in game terms. The Tempest only gets one spell that it can use as a magic power, and the Diffusionist seems unnecessary - just make a multiclassed Mad Scientist/Huckster. And neither class has a standard base attack progression (and 1 doesn't even make sense mathmatically).
Also some info from the Deadlands d20 book is repeated, but not enough for someone to make a Huckster character. So, it's somewhat odd it was included, other than for filler.
There's about 15 pages of new spells (about 40 of them) for Hucksters. These can probably be transported to the wizard class without too much of a problem. Most are okay, I guess (haven't used them much).
Next is a chapter of sorts on combining Mad Science with Huckster-ish (as in the Diffusionist), it's also got some spells dealing with this.
There's a short chapter on new relics - a few pages and about 10 or so of them. Relics are more or less like regular d20 magic items, only much rarer and unique.
The last part of the book is for the GM, and is about 15 pages or so of misc advice, Deadlands background info (including two secret societies), and stuff like a larger backlash table.
So, is this book any good? Well, the new spells are okay. But that's about the only really good part of the book. I have to give this product a big fat D.
Now bear in mind, I was somewhat familiar with the original Deadlands game, but I only had about 6-7 books for it at the most (and most of those have since been traded away). I never had the original equivalent of this.
Anyway, the book starts off with some history of Edmond Hoyle in the Deadlands universe. It seems he was in fact an occultist, who hid spells and occult lore in his book on games. This goes into how and why and is fairly interesting (at least for me). This is about 5 pages or so.
The next chapter is also pretty small and adds some new character options. Basically, 1 new feat and 2 new prestige classes, the Tempest and the Diffusionist. A Tempest is almost like a sorcerer (in terms of game fiction) in that it has an inborn magical talent. A Diffusionist is like a combination of Huckster and Mad Scientist.
Neither class makes all that much sense in game terms. The Tempest only gets one spell that it can use as a magic power, and the Diffusionist seems unnecessary - just make a multiclassed Mad Scientist/Huckster. And neither class has a standard base attack progression (and 1 doesn't even make sense mathmatically).
Also some info from the Deadlands d20 book is repeated, but not enough for someone to make a Huckster character. So, it's somewhat odd it was included, other than for filler.
There's about 15 pages of new spells (about 40 of them) for Hucksters. These can probably be transported to the wizard class without too much of a problem. Most are okay, I guess (haven't used them much).
Next is a chapter of sorts on combining Mad Science with Huckster-ish (as in the Diffusionist), it's also got some spells dealing with this.
There's a short chapter on new relics - a few pages and about 10 or so of them. Relics are more or less like regular d20 magic items, only much rarer and unique.
The last part of the book is for the GM, and is about 15 pages or so of misc advice, Deadlands background info (including two secret societies), and stuff like a larger backlash table.
So, is this book any good? Well, the new spells are okay. But that's about the only really good part of the book. I have to give this product a big fat D.
