JoeGKushner
Adventurer
With books like Into the Green and AEG's Wilds, it looks like the last hurrah of 3.0 may have been, “It's time to get back out of the Dungeon.”
Wilds is AEG's latest one word title book with contributions by some fan favorites like Jeff Ibach, Mike Mearls and AEG's regular Jim Pinto with art by a several artists including Marcio Fiorito. It uses two columns and editing is fairly good throughout the manual. White space use is fair with good borders on all sides and easy readability.
Wilds is broken up into seven chapters, the first covering general outdoor survival, the other six covering specific environments. The material on Outdoor Survival is broken up into areas like new uses for old skills, spell use, wilderness activities and other essential of survival. Sometimes the information is a tad too obvious like how the spell Alarm's long duration makes it a good spell when camping or the use of Create Food and Water to lessen the encumbrance load. If going that route, where's the notes about say, Tenser's Floating Disk?
Most of the material manages to be more useful though like the notes on mapping wilderness areas or what type of pyramid food chains are necessary to sustain predators. The only problem is, that according to the book, it takes five times the number of herbivores to support a single predator and no D20 fantasy forest I've ever played in or read about has that many deer within its boundaries.
My favorite part of Chapter One though, is how the different monster types tend to interact and change the wilds about them. For instance, undead cause decay to set in with reduction in visibility and ghost sounds startling the party at unexpected times. Some specific creatures have their own unique effects on the environment too, but the main problem with these little tricks, is that while they add another layer of detail and depth, they become one trick ponies. “Oh look, stone statues stuffed into the hollow log. We must have a medusa around here...”
The other chapters, desert, forest, jungles, marshes, mountains, and tundra, each go into detail about what makes that enviornment and include different bits of information. I wish it was all laid out the same so that after reading about the environment in say, Forest, I could read about a Forest style campaign, like I can with the Desert, or that the Rules of Surival, as noted in the Tundra, were present in the Marshes. The rules and materials are often there, just not in the same order with the same label, making things more difficult than they need to be.
Each section has a core class, often a variant of the ranger, for example, desert ranger, swamp ranger or tundra ranger, with a few wilderness classes like woodsman, beast lord and mountaineer thrown in. These core classes are all fully stated out from 1st to 20th level and include all of the core information and abilities of each class. It's a nice player gesture and allows a player to get more options from the book then merely knowing what new skills or things he's got to fight.
In addition, each section comes with several new prestige classes. The PrCs cover a wide ranger of types and abilities. While at first, because these are wilderness based PrCs, something like a King of Thieves might be out of place, in a desert community, it fits perfectly. Likewise, something like the Shadow Striker, a specialty trained elf, might not seem to work well in the jungle, but when looking at their sniper like background, it becomes clear that a jungle environment is perfect for those campaigns wishing to style themselves after the movie Predator.
A third benefit for players is those spellcasters looking for specific types of spells to maximize their powers in a specific location. Because each section has its own listing of spells and because each section is relatively small, there are no breakdown of spells by caster type and level, but rather, the spells just start in right away in alphabetical order. This varies from the Lends of the Sun, a 5th level Sor/Wiz spell that turns the sun's rays into a heat beam to Primal Fury, a Brd/Drd 2, Sor/Wiz 3 spell that basically grants the touched the effects of a barbarian's rage ability.
Now we've got core classes, PrCs and spells so that only leaves feats. The feats range from giving you some base skills as class skills with bonus skills points to augmenting your ability to survive in a particular climate. I wish that AEG used a template for the class skills as I really don't need to see a variant of the +2 to any two skills replaced as “X, Y and Z are Class Skills and have 4 Skill Points. Some of the feat descriptions also worry me. Like Poison Expert, “Many times, you have accidentally exposed yourself to them (poisons).” Now my game benefit is that “You're dead. Roll up a new character.” How about replacing that with, “You've exposed yourself to poisons many times in order to develop a strong resistance to them.”
This isn't to say that there aren't other little bits scattered throughout the book for players. For example, if you're looking for new herbs or places where the elemental planes are closer to the prime material, augmenting a certain type of elemental force, than the book has you covered.
What about the poor GM though? Well, each section also comes with various hazards that you can torment the characters with. Are they getting a little too arrogant in the marshes? Have some sink holes pull 'em under. Are they making their way too quickly through the mountain pass? Have falling rocks cut them off.
While natural hazards are fine, as Into the Green showcases, GMs really like monsters. Here, AEG doesn't let us down as many new creatures are introduced to the game. Like the spells though, we get no master listing either by alphabetical order or by CR so look over the sections well. Some of these we've seen in one form or another like Mountain Trolls and Frost Elementals, while others, like the small razor birds of the jungles and the pyrix, fire sprites, can add an element of the unknown to the game.
For me, one of the best yet worst aspects of the book is the little material under Features. For example, the Devouring Jungle is ruled by an ancient titan banished forward in time to the present who has both the half-fiend and vampire templates. He seeks to renew his victory over the mortal races and only the players can stop him, but there's a deeper plot device that clever players can expose, allowing a GM to use this set up with a wide variety of character levels.
It's a great set up, but it's a lot of work for the GM. Where are the maps? Where are the encounters? Where are the stat blocks? Nope, all left for the GM to handle. Perfect for those who just need the germ of an idea but bad for those like me who find that my job doesn't understand the creative need to stat out the dark titan Hadyar and his demonic minions.
There are only a few things holding Wilds back from the five star rating. The first is the art. While it's good when present, a lot of things in this book could use some further illustration. For example, the monsters. While the player sections expand the appeal of this book, there are some things that could've been done to make the utility even greater like specific weapons and favorite weapons of the various areas. Lastly, while it hit on most of the player goodies, I didn't see magic items. Can't have a jungle lord without his ancient yet powerful flint knife can we?
Wilds goes into more material than Into the Green does but doesn't share that's books depth. On the other hand, it covers more environments, has more pages and is only $1 more. If you're a player looking to expand your options for your 3.0 Wilderness Survival skills for rangers, barbarians and druids, than Wilds is for you.
Wilds is AEG's latest one word title book with contributions by some fan favorites like Jeff Ibach, Mike Mearls and AEG's regular Jim Pinto with art by a several artists including Marcio Fiorito. It uses two columns and editing is fairly good throughout the manual. White space use is fair with good borders on all sides and easy readability.
Wilds is broken up into seven chapters, the first covering general outdoor survival, the other six covering specific environments. The material on Outdoor Survival is broken up into areas like new uses for old skills, spell use, wilderness activities and other essential of survival. Sometimes the information is a tad too obvious like how the spell Alarm's long duration makes it a good spell when camping or the use of Create Food and Water to lessen the encumbrance load. If going that route, where's the notes about say, Tenser's Floating Disk?
Most of the material manages to be more useful though like the notes on mapping wilderness areas or what type of pyramid food chains are necessary to sustain predators. The only problem is, that according to the book, it takes five times the number of herbivores to support a single predator and no D20 fantasy forest I've ever played in or read about has that many deer within its boundaries.
My favorite part of Chapter One though, is how the different monster types tend to interact and change the wilds about them. For instance, undead cause decay to set in with reduction in visibility and ghost sounds startling the party at unexpected times. Some specific creatures have their own unique effects on the environment too, but the main problem with these little tricks, is that while they add another layer of detail and depth, they become one trick ponies. “Oh look, stone statues stuffed into the hollow log. We must have a medusa around here...”
The other chapters, desert, forest, jungles, marshes, mountains, and tundra, each go into detail about what makes that enviornment and include different bits of information. I wish it was all laid out the same so that after reading about the environment in say, Forest, I could read about a Forest style campaign, like I can with the Desert, or that the Rules of Surival, as noted in the Tundra, were present in the Marshes. The rules and materials are often there, just not in the same order with the same label, making things more difficult than they need to be.
Each section has a core class, often a variant of the ranger, for example, desert ranger, swamp ranger or tundra ranger, with a few wilderness classes like woodsman, beast lord and mountaineer thrown in. These core classes are all fully stated out from 1st to 20th level and include all of the core information and abilities of each class. It's a nice player gesture and allows a player to get more options from the book then merely knowing what new skills or things he's got to fight.
In addition, each section comes with several new prestige classes. The PrCs cover a wide ranger of types and abilities. While at first, because these are wilderness based PrCs, something like a King of Thieves might be out of place, in a desert community, it fits perfectly. Likewise, something like the Shadow Striker, a specialty trained elf, might not seem to work well in the jungle, but when looking at their sniper like background, it becomes clear that a jungle environment is perfect for those campaigns wishing to style themselves after the movie Predator.
A third benefit for players is those spellcasters looking for specific types of spells to maximize their powers in a specific location. Because each section has its own listing of spells and because each section is relatively small, there are no breakdown of spells by caster type and level, but rather, the spells just start in right away in alphabetical order. This varies from the Lends of the Sun, a 5th level Sor/Wiz spell that turns the sun's rays into a heat beam to Primal Fury, a Brd/Drd 2, Sor/Wiz 3 spell that basically grants the touched the effects of a barbarian's rage ability.
Now we've got core classes, PrCs and spells so that only leaves feats. The feats range from giving you some base skills as class skills with bonus skills points to augmenting your ability to survive in a particular climate. I wish that AEG used a template for the class skills as I really don't need to see a variant of the +2 to any two skills replaced as “X, Y and Z are Class Skills and have 4 Skill Points. Some of the feat descriptions also worry me. Like Poison Expert, “Many times, you have accidentally exposed yourself to them (poisons).” Now my game benefit is that “You're dead. Roll up a new character.” How about replacing that with, “You've exposed yourself to poisons many times in order to develop a strong resistance to them.”
This isn't to say that there aren't other little bits scattered throughout the book for players. For example, if you're looking for new herbs or places where the elemental planes are closer to the prime material, augmenting a certain type of elemental force, than the book has you covered.
What about the poor GM though? Well, each section also comes with various hazards that you can torment the characters with. Are they getting a little too arrogant in the marshes? Have some sink holes pull 'em under. Are they making their way too quickly through the mountain pass? Have falling rocks cut them off.
While natural hazards are fine, as Into the Green showcases, GMs really like monsters. Here, AEG doesn't let us down as many new creatures are introduced to the game. Like the spells though, we get no master listing either by alphabetical order or by CR so look over the sections well. Some of these we've seen in one form or another like Mountain Trolls and Frost Elementals, while others, like the small razor birds of the jungles and the pyrix, fire sprites, can add an element of the unknown to the game.
For me, one of the best yet worst aspects of the book is the little material under Features. For example, the Devouring Jungle is ruled by an ancient titan banished forward in time to the present who has both the half-fiend and vampire templates. He seeks to renew his victory over the mortal races and only the players can stop him, but there's a deeper plot device that clever players can expose, allowing a GM to use this set up with a wide variety of character levels.
It's a great set up, but it's a lot of work for the GM. Where are the maps? Where are the encounters? Where are the stat blocks? Nope, all left for the GM to handle. Perfect for those who just need the germ of an idea but bad for those like me who find that my job doesn't understand the creative need to stat out the dark titan Hadyar and his demonic minions.
There are only a few things holding Wilds back from the five star rating. The first is the art. While it's good when present, a lot of things in this book could use some further illustration. For example, the monsters. While the player sections expand the appeal of this book, there are some things that could've been done to make the utility even greater like specific weapons and favorite weapons of the various areas. Lastly, while it hit on most of the player goodies, I didn't see magic items. Can't have a jungle lord without his ancient yet powerful flint knife can we?
Wilds goes into more material than Into the Green does but doesn't share that's books depth. On the other hand, it covers more environments, has more pages and is only $1 more. If you're a player looking to expand your options for your 3.0 Wilderness Survival skills for rangers, barbarians and druids, than Wilds is for you.
