Turanil
First Post
Thanks to the publisher/author who sent me a complimentary/review copy of Unorthodox Witches. Before getting any further into this review, I must say that I no longer play/run D&D 3.5, so have no real need for a witch classes book. Then, I feel that the d20 market has been saturated with crunch material of all sort (especially when it comes to fantasy), and whether it be of good quality, I am not really interested in it anymore. As such, I did mostly read Unorthodox Witches out of mild curiosity, not from a need of incorporating witches into a campaign of mine.
So, I opened the file: nice to see not only both a screen and print PDFs, but also a RTF version for copypasting at leisure (which could be useful if I wanted to adapt this to Castles & Crusades!). Then my firs look was at the cover, and it looks very nice, a professional work. Now the book: including the cover (which is apart) it's a 60 page document. Layout is only decent, but I have seen worse and less readable; so here it's not bad, but just displaying the info in a clean and efficient way, nothing visually stunning.
Having a simple supplement on witches is a good idea, as this essential archetype of fantasy isn't featured in the core D&D rules. Hence, my opinion is that this PDF is the one that makes the most sense of the Unorthodox Classes line. There are 5 witch base classes, plus one prestige class. They represent various types of witches, such as an enchantress, spirit-talker, Norn-like seer, old-religion priestess, etc. For example, the Beguiler is an Enchantment specialist wizard but with a few more abilities than a regular wizard. This makes it slightly more loaded (skill points and special abilities), which you may see either as a good thing or unbalancing depending on your point of view. Myself, seeing how many wizard PCs quickly take a prestige class to be more powerful, I don't think it's a bad idea. Other witch classes are more differentiated from a wizard though, and make the supplement worthwhile. For example, I much like the "Edge of Madness" hindrance effect, that could be of interesting use (at least form a DM's point of view, probably not from the player's!) not only for the Shade Summoner witch class, but in fact for any PC you would want to suffer from some insanity effect.
There is also a small chapter on magical baubles for which I would have no use, since I always liked to create myself the magical items I gave to my players. Yet, it gives some interesting ideas to the hurried DM, or those short on imagination.
All in all, this is a good book if you are in additional and variant classes. Now, to fit such witches into you campaign world, since no fluff is provided (beyond the class description) you will have to make it by yourself. Or you may get the free netbook of witches "Liber Mysterium", providing ample fluff, while the classes in Unorthodox Witches will complement it perfectly (different, and IMO more interesting that the witch class in LB).
So, I opened the file: nice to see not only both a screen and print PDFs, but also a RTF version for copypasting at leisure (which could be useful if I wanted to adapt this to Castles & Crusades!). Then my firs look was at the cover, and it looks very nice, a professional work. Now the book: including the cover (which is apart) it's a 60 page document. Layout is only decent, but I have seen worse and less readable; so here it's not bad, but just displaying the info in a clean and efficient way, nothing visually stunning.
Having a simple supplement on witches is a good idea, as this essential archetype of fantasy isn't featured in the core D&D rules. Hence, my opinion is that this PDF is the one that makes the most sense of the Unorthodox Classes line. There are 5 witch base classes, plus one prestige class. They represent various types of witches, such as an enchantress, spirit-talker, Norn-like seer, old-religion priestess, etc. For example, the Beguiler is an Enchantment specialist wizard but with a few more abilities than a regular wizard. This makes it slightly more loaded (skill points and special abilities), which you may see either as a good thing or unbalancing depending on your point of view. Myself, seeing how many wizard PCs quickly take a prestige class to be more powerful, I don't think it's a bad idea. Other witch classes are more differentiated from a wizard though, and make the supplement worthwhile. For example, I much like the "Edge of Madness" hindrance effect, that could be of interesting use (at least form a DM's point of view, probably not from the player's!) not only for the Shade Summoner witch class, but in fact for any PC you would want to suffer from some insanity effect.
There is also a small chapter on magical baubles for which I would have no use, since I always liked to create myself the magical items I gave to my players. Yet, it gives some interesting ideas to the hurried DM, or those short on imagination.
All in all, this is a good book if you are in additional and variant classes. Now, to fit such witches into you campaign world, since no fluff is provided (beyond the class description) you will have to make it by yourself. Or you may get the free netbook of witches "Liber Mysterium", providing ample fluff, while the classes in Unorthodox Witches will complement it perfectly (different, and IMO more interesting that the witch class in LB).
