Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009597" data-attributes="member: 172">Wrath & Rage: A Guidebook to Orcs and Half-OrcsWrath & Rage is the second in Green Ronin's alliteratively-titled Races of Reknown series, following their Hammer & Helm sourcebook for Dwarves. Wrath & Rage is written by Jim Bishop, who contributed to some other Green Ronin books as well as Dragon articles.A First LookWrath & Rage is an 80 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $16.95. This is fairly standard for a d20 book of this size.The cover of Wrath & Rage (by Marc Evans) depicts a number of green skinned orc warriors and a female orc spellcaster preparing to engage in battle against the backdrop of a ruined city. The back cover reveals that this picture is half of a larger picture, the other half of which is the cover to Paradigm Publishing's Eldest Sons: The Essential Guide to Elves.The interior is black-and-white. The interior art is by frequent Malhavoc and Green Ronin artist Toren "MacBin" Atkinson. The depictions have a rather demented look to them as is common in his illustrations, but in the case of orcs, this seems to work.The interior body text is small, and the header text is moderate, stylish, and readable. There is a single space between the paragraphs. The interior editing seems pretty good overall, and I noticed no major gaffes. I did notice some small gaffes, such as the infamous internet "teh" spelling of "the."A Deeper LookWrath & Rage is arranged similarly to the prior book in the series, Hammer & Helm. The chapters cover racial concepts, feats, prestige classes, creatures, deities, spells, and equipment, and an appendix with more race specific stock NPCs than those offered in the DMG.The first chapter covers racial concepts associated with orcs and half-orcs. The first section of the chapter discusses some character archtypes you might want to use for orcs, and how orcs fit into the core PC and NPC classes, including how they fit the concept and the best approaches to using the class with game mechanics to realize a competent character.As with Hammer & Helm, Wrath & Rage offers alternative racial concepts. Unlike that book, these concepts are less adaptable to individual tribes; they are more a whole campaign take on orcs. Examples include the more brutish and animalistic savage orc and the bizarre created orcs with genetic memory.The second chapter introduces a number of new feats targeted at orcs. The feats are overall a mixed bag; some seem good, others makes some mistakes that will require GM tweaking before use.The book includes a number of rage channeling feats. These are similar to the rage feats in Bad Axe Games' Heroes of High Favor: Half Orcs in that they allow a character with the rage ability to spend some of their daily rages to gain additional effects. For example, punishing rage allows the orc to gain the advantages similar to the great cleave feat as well as being able to take a 5' step after each cleave, but only during a rage and only by spending rage uses.There are two NPC exclusive monster feats: nouveau riche and rich. The flavor of the names seem a little off for orcs to me, but otherwise the concept seems okay: the NPC gives up a feat in exchange for a larger allotment of equipment. Though the DMG already recommends allowing larger equipment expenditures for special NPCs, this might be a way that the GM might balance lesser NPCs.One flawed feat is the keen scent feat. It requires the character to have the scent feat, but can only be taken at first level. The problem is that typical starting characters (including orcs and half-orcs) only get one starting general feat.There are a number of "eye" feats that allow a cleric to convert spells to specific spells as a cleric normally converts spells to heal or inflict. The book calls these "metamagic" feats but they really aren't.The prestige classes chapter introduces a number of new prestige classes for orcs and half-orcs. These are:- Bride of He Who Watches: This prestige class is for particularly savage female orcs or half-orcs who enter a secretive sisterhood that purports a special relationship with an orcish deity symbolized by an eye. They are good warriors with abilities to smite good and call out enemies.- Cutthroat: The cutthroat is basically a half-orcish assassin and infiltrator trained to take advantage of their near-human appearance.- Honored Host: The honored host is an orc that passes away from disease, but is reanimated by the orcish death god by pestilence and vermin. The honored host gains class abilities related to disease and their unnatural state of existence.- Mother of Rage: The mother of rage is an elderly female orc that gives birth to hideous creatures (basically fiendish animals). These creatures sap the mother of power, but are powerful in their own right.- Orc Sapper: The orc sapper is a specialist trained in tunneling under the walls erected by more sophisticated races.- Rage Smith: The rage smith is an orc who creates magic items not through normal item creation feats, but the investment of rage. The rage smith eventually dies in his last creation, but this creation becomes invested with his intelligence.- Soul Gorger: The soul gorger is a savage orc that temporarily gains abilities and knowledge from consuming enemies.It seems apparent to me that most of these prestige classes are not suitable for PCs, except perhaps in an evil game (and even then, I doubt many players would take them.) These prestige classes would serve well as bizarre villains in a campaign, though.The fourth chapter introduces new creatures. Most of these creatures are allies or mounts to orcs.The anathema creature is a spinoff of the idea that orcs despoil the land wherever they go; anathema creatures are undead that rise from creatures in the land despoiled by orcs. The sample creature is the hideous anathema nymph.Other creatures include the dire rhinoceros, dire ostrich (axebeak), a half-orc template that can be used with any living creature, a rabid creature template, and two new giant vermin, the giant slug and giant leech.The fifth chapter covers the deities of the Orcs. In actuality, it has two different pantheons with different approaches. The first is the great warband, which resembles a classic pantheon. It includes the figures He Who Watches, The Cave Mother, Grandfather White Hands, Iron Fist, The Mule, The Nightlord, and The Pale Lady.The second pantheon, the Partrons, follow a different concept. It proposes that orcs were not created by the divine hands. These orcs came to follow the patrons, powerful supernatural beings, but killable. Each of the patrons has typical deity statistics, but also has powerful combat statistics. The concept is that in a campaign, if the orcs are a scourge, the players may eventually hope to permanently alter the course of the orcs.The book provides the option that the patrons cannot truly grant a normal complement of spells to clerics, but can only offer summon patron creature spells, which are variants of the summon monster spells. It occurs to me that the concept of patrons would also work well if you use the small gods rules from FFG's Spells & Spellcraft or shamans from Green Ronin's Shaman's Handbook.The spells chapter contains new spells and new domains for orcs. The new domains are blight, breeding, command, curse, lycanthropy, murder, poison, savagery, and treachery. Most of the spells are supporting the new domains, such as the powerful curse bestow malediction and the treachery domain spell miscast spell promises to perturb opposing spellcasters. The equipment chapter includes siege engines (like the arbalest), special and superior items (like magebane, a smoke-like substance that makes concentration more difficult) and magic items. Some of the more interesting magic items include the grudge special armor quality (which protects better against a particular creature type), and cutthroat charms (small charms that for a short time each day can enlarge and perform as a particular magic item.)The appendix contains statistics for standard orc NPCs. Ten levels each are provided for orc adepts and warriors, while a full 20 levels are provided for orcish clerics (of he-who-watches), barbarians, and rogues.ConclusionWrath & Rage gets a bit of a weak start, and the character material is not as strong as that of Hammer & Helm. The character material seem much more focused on NPC appropriate concepts than PC appropriate concepts. If you are looking for material for PCs, you might try this book's main competitor, Heroes of High Favor: Half-Orcs. As a book for PCs, you might read this review as a 3 instead of a 4.However, the book has some good concepts for villains and orcs as a villainous race, and add some depth to them beyond the stereotypical barbaric orc. Much as with Hammer & Helm, Wrath & Rage adds some new and interesting twists to the topic race. The Patrons in particular really took me by surprise in providing campaign ideas instead of just spewing a new gaggle of stereotypical deities. What's better is that this is all OGC.-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

Verification