Great Creativity, Mediocre Rules
DISCLAIMERS
This is not a playtest review. I received this product for free as part of Thele's contest series, and agreed to review it as a favor.
OVERVIEW
On the whole, this is a very creative product with some severe mechanical issues. I think parts of it are great, but don’t feel comfortable dropping it into my game without some in-depth tinkering. Further, three of the five core classes presented are completely reliant on possessing a specific item; without it, they are powerless.
PRESENTATION
This product comes in three formats: the primary, a 50-page portrait formatted print resolution version, a 53-page landscape-formatted version for screen viewing, and a 50-page, landscape-formatted text document for cutting and pasting into other documents. Very few companies provide multiple formats, so high marks for The Le Games on that count.
It is clear, though, that the landscape is a derivative of the portrait version, knocked out as a courtesy, as the two-column layout doesn’t work nearly as cleanly in that case. Understandable, since the time invested in layout is always a huge cost point for the production of these products, so no marks against them on that count. Further review notes will therefore focus on the portrait version of the product.
The graphic design of this product is pretty simple – no colored borders, no fancy blackletter text, one or two fonts used throughout. It’s a pretty simple serif font, about 9 points, so an average size for print resolution. The text is two-column, justified, with art interspersed either as a column header, or in between the two columns. A table of information occasionally breaks up the two columns. Personally, I’m not a big fan of justified text – it definitely cleans up the overall appearance, but at the cost of readability.
Overall, the presentation is adequate but nothing exciting.
ART
The cover art is the only piece of custom artwork in the product; the internal art is credited to three different clip art sources.
The cover features a comely young woman, dressed in a slightly risqué fashion (well, modestly, compared to an average Avalanche Press cover, or The Le’s own Unorthodox Fighters – by the way, Photoshop’s Invert Colors is never your friend). The art is done in a cartoon/animation style, over a photograph background of some cliffs and trees. She is brandishing several different ranged weapons.
It’s one of the weakest of the recent Unorthodox covers. Her pose is a bit stiff and awkward; there’s no muscle tension in the arm holding the pistol aloft, and she seems off-balance. She also has scary-long nails. It’s nicely detailed and colored, though the background’s a bit too dominant. It could have been faded back, achieved a similar look and feel, and at the same time caused a lot less visual conflict on the cover.
Internally, there is a very wide range – not uncommon when the art isn’t custom ordered for a product. The “portrait” of each of the classes is typically great, and really evokes the feeling of the classes. Some of the art interspersed into the text is pretty mediocre, and in some cases distracts from the text.
WRITING
This section refers mostly to the flavor text of the product.
On the whole, the writing here is pretty good. There are a lot of run-on or overly long sentences, and a few grammatical errors. One thing that annoyed me was that each class seems to have two passages on alignment – one in the flavor text and one in the game mechanics – and they often conflicted, either with themselves, or with another passage.
EDITING AND LAYOUT
I think this product would have benefited greatly by receiving another pass from a good editor. There were a number of grammatical errors, a few typos, and quite a few cut and paste errors. The most glaring of these is in the divine archer prestige class, where in multiple locations, it says “arcane archer” – betraying its roots as a conversion of the SRD Prestige class.
I also noticed several instances where things probably should have been laid out differently. In particular, the inclusion of a new skill (Craft: Black Powder), which probably should have been called out in its own appendix, as the new feats are. This would have saved reprinting the same information in two classes. Arguably, it could also have been presented as a new use for a skill (Craft: Alchemy), which would seem to fit the bill quite nicely.
There were a number of instances where information was reprinted straight from the SRD or DMG –many conditions, magic weapon properties and metamagic feats show up in the text of this product. The utility of these passages is certainly debatable. In the conflict between utility and space, I would usually prefer to have less space taken up with redundant material, but I realize I may be in the minority here.
CREATIVITY
I think this is the strongest part of the product – some of the concepts here are just great!
I really like the whole flavor of the Leviathan Slayer; a driven hunter who concentrates on the biggest and baddest creatures he can find! There are so many literary archetypes this roll fits – Captain Ahab, for one, or St. George…
I like some of the abilities of the Demolitionist, particularly the special charges they can create.
The Wandslinger is also a great class idea, and possibly my favorite presented here. A user and abuser of magic, without the ability to create it for himself, he gains the abilities to not only use wands, but to manipulate their magic to create a number of dramatically different effects. He even learns to recharge them at cost of his own body, something that not even wizards can do.
Frankly, I’m dying to see a Pistoleer/Wandslinger duel.
RULES
Unfortunately, here is where the product falls down dramatically. Many class abilities or effects seem to duplicate or mimic existing, defined effects and abilities, yet have different mechanics of resolution.
Examples:
Grenade bouncing – several issues here. In a game defined by 5’ increments, a miss means the grenade bounces 1d6 feet away from your intended target. Of course, this all entirely ignores the “throwing a splash weapon” rules, clearly spelled out in the SRD.
As he gains levels, the Demolitionist’s powder increases in power, and he gains the ability to add special abilities to it, but with no corresponding increase in the DC for the skill check. This provides no motivation for continuing to put skill ranks into the skill. See the Bardic Music Perform requirements for an example.
The Improviser’s “Wind Up”, “Advanced Improvisation”, and “Eagle Eye” abilities, and the Leviathan Slayer’s “Throw Further” ability, seem to mimic several feats, but do not state how they interact with those same feats – do they stack? Are they equivalent?
“Monster Strike” is pretty much a smite attack on Large or bigger creatures, but has different mechanics.
The Leviathan Slayer’s “Persistent Strike” and “Monster Elements” abilities seem to mimic really powerful versions of some enhancements for magic weapons.
The Pistoleer’s “Running Shot” ability is exactly the same as Shot on the Run. Why not just give them the feat?
Oddly, here I have a criticism that’s the opposite of the above – the Wandslinger gets, over the course of his career, three feats related to recharging wands. Personally, I think they should just be class abilities and not feats – it’s cooler if they are the only ones who can do that.
“Fast Draw” is similar to Quick Draw, and should probably just be a variant of that.
The Divine Archer’s “Divine Elements” ability is really similar to any of the energy burst enhancements to magic weapons, except how it treats a critical hit.
The Pinpointer’s “Ranged Disarm” Ability should probably use the established disarm rules, except at range, rather than a called shot.
Further, some of the rules are just broken or questionable, or at least departures from standardized, d20 methods of class creation.
Notable problems include:
Non-standard save progressions for all classes
No starting gold listed for any of the new core classes. This is especially problematic for the Wandslinger, Demolitionist, and Pistoleer.
Improviser:
A reference to a ‘half-action’
Attacks of opportunity with ranged weapons (impossible, unless you give a character the ability to threaten an area with a ranged weapon, which is a major balance issue)
The Leviathan Slayer
Ref saves for 1/2 damage on melee or ranged attacks
The “Piercing Strike” ability reduces a creature’s damage reduction, but does not say for how long, or how the creature heals the damage.
“Imbue Returning” and “Monster Brilliance” don’t say how long they take to perform.
“Avoid” sounds more like a dwarf’s dodge bonus vs. giants than a circumstance bonus, and should probably be treated as such.
The “Monster Aim” ability is tied to whichever of the three mental stats is highest. This should probably be tied to just one of them, arguably Wisdom or Intelligence.
Pistoleer:
A reference to “critical miss”, which are not part of the 3.5e ruleset.
Penetration bullets give a 20% chance to ignore a target’s damage resistance. There are virtually no % rolls in d20; this should probably just bypass a certain amount of resistance.
The Pistoleer gets free upgrades to his weapon at basically every level. Would that my paladin got the same to his longsword.
Wandslinger:
A class that is nearly entirely reliant on owning and using magic wands doesn’t start with a magic wand. Even the Pistoleer starts with a baseline pistol.
By definition, since there is no Wandslinger spell list, they cannot automatically activate any wands. There is no special ability listed to allow them to do so, therefore they must need to use the Use Magic Device skill to do so. The flat DC on a Use Magic Device check to use a magic wand is 20. Barring the Skill Focus or related feats, a first level Wandslinger, with maxed ranks in this skill, will likely have a less than 50/50 chance of actually being able to activate his only class ability at any time.
There are no DCs listed for any of the Wandslinger’s special abilities related to channeling magical energy from the wand. I would like to have seen a range of DCs, from 15 for cantrips to much higher for the spell resistance ability.
The Wandslinger, at 9th level, gains the ability to use one charge from a wand to mimic a slightly less powerful version of the Spell Resistance spell, but with a duration of 1 DAY minimum, with likely more!
On all of the wand channeling abilities, I would like to have seen a note indicating that the wand in use must be higher level than the spell being cast with that magical energy, particularly in relation to the spell resistance ability. I can already envision a situation where one of these characters buys a wand of detect magic and is using it to mimic a 5th level spell for multiple days at a time - a serious issue.
The Divine Archer
In its divine health ability, lists two different dice sizes as the amount that will be healed.
There is also a section on Baubles and Urus, which are minor artifacts. I’m not going to get into those here, except to say that someone finally wrote rules allowing for Final Fantasy VII style slottable weapons.
