| Title - Savage Species: Playing Monstrous Characters Publisher - Wizards of the Coast Price: $29.95 US Authors: David Eckelberry, Rich Redman, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes 224 pages Hardcover, full color interior ISBN 0-7869-2648-1 |
| Review by Scott Sutherland |
| "A new breed of adventurer. Whether wondrous or wicked, some monsters have a calling that reaches beyond the ordinary existence of their kind. Traveling alongside other intrepid characters, these heroic creatures carve their places in legend with sword, spell, tooth and claw." Savage Species, a 223pg hardcover supplement for 3e or 3.5e Dungeons and Dragons, provides the rules necessary to design and play a monster race as a player character. It goes a step further in that, providing Dungeon Masters with the information they need to advance monsters in interesting ways, applying templates and prestige classes, in order to create more interesting opponents for their players. For designing player characters, the book provides the level adjustments for dozens of monsters, broken down into classifications of Introductory, Intermediate, and Advanced. These classifications simply denote how complicated it is to play such a monster. It even provides guidelines for estimating the level adjustment of other monsters, to allow players and DMs to branch out beyond the examples given in the book. This process can be a bit difficult, however it suggests that players and DMs work together in order to set level adjustments. This is slightly limiting, however it does allow DMs to have control over what is played in their campaign. It also provides examples of estimating level adjustment, to show you the guidelines. I found the creation of Monster Classes to be something truly inspired on the writers' part. This involves regressing a monster, reducing their hit dice, traits, special attacks and abilities, and their attributes so as to make them a +0 level adjustment character with 1 hit die. There is only a small section detailing how to do this, however they provide many examples further back in the book. The book provides a fairly good selection of feats that are specifically for monsters. There is nothing spectacular here, and I believe most of them are just transplanted from other sourcebooks. However, some monster PCs will find these feats to be very useful. The same goes for equipment. There are advanced rules for weapon sizes, which have been incorporated into the 3.5e rules set, and there are some interesting bits of equipment, but not everyone will find something in this section they can use. The section on spells provides some new entries, but most of them seem to come from various other supplements. Still, compiling them all here makes it much easier to put them to good use, so I wouldn't count this against the authors. The prestige classes offered in this book are fairly well done, however their usefulness is a bit limited. The only one of personal note is Emancipated Spawn. If a beloved character is killed by undead such as shadows, ghouls or wights, and the spawning undead is destroyed, Emancipated Spawn allows your character to regain some measure of their former life, although remaining undead. The other prestige classes will have limited use for player characters; however they will find their use with Dungeon Masters looking to create more interesting encounters. The Campaigns section contains a fairly good discussion on implementing monster characters into campaigns, and creating campaigns specifically for monsters, as well a nice part about playing evil characters in the game. I am not a fan of playing evil in the game. However I found this last section to be fairly well written. The chapter on Advancing Monsters was a necessary addition to the book, detailing advancing monsters by class, prestige class and monster type, and offers tips on calculating the new CR of the advanced creature, and what feats are best to select for various creatures for maximum effect. The next offering is the Templates. There are some fairly interesting entries here, which give an immediate change to the character, unlike prestige classes, which take time to fully develop. Some of the more interesting ones? Feral Creature - turning a "normal" creature into something even more deadly, Incarnate Construct - the creation of a living creature out of a golem or other construct, Tauric Creatures - allowing you to combine many different creatures to form centaur-like results, Umbral Creatures - undead creatures with ties to the Plane of Shadow, as well as Wights, Wraiths and Yuan-Ti, among others. These templates are very useful for both players and DMs to create interesting characters and opponents. The last section of the book talks about methods of becoming a monster, such as polymorphing, the various spawn abilities of undead and slaadi, and effect of lycanthropy. It also introduces several magic rituals that can be performed to achieve the desired result. There isn't a lot of detail in this section, except the part about rituals, but it does give the DM ideas on how to handle various situations, which can be built on with a little bit of imagination. The Appendices contain a plethora of sample monster classes, which are not only immediately usable, but also act as good examples for creating your own (as I mention previously), and Compiled Tables of all the standard monsters from the Monster Manual, with hit dice, level adjustment, ECL, ability modifiers, BAB, Saves, Natural Armor, skill points, feats as well as the creature category (Introductory, Intermediate, or Advanced). The best parts of this book: Monster Classes (as well as the samples), Monster Prestige Classes, and Monster Templates. The rest of the book delivers fairly well, but perhaps lacks in the fine details. These details can be filled in by a creative DM, however, guidance is always appreciated, especially in the gray areas delved into with the creation of Monster Classes and when calculating racial level adjustment. A stronger representation of level adjustment calculation would have been good, rather than the guidelines they give. Also, I noticed some errors in the book. However, they were mostly confined to the compiled tables in Appendix 2. Overall, I would say that the book delivers what it claims. It is the definitive sourcebook for creating monster characters. It does the job with a nice sense of style, and with some very interesting ideas. It lacks some details that would have made it not only easier to create these characters, but also would have added more substance, however, the information it does give is adequate, as long as the player and DM work together to create the character. One major gripe I would have with the book is that many of the more interesting creatures available are only usable at very high levels. The concept of Monster Classes helps with this, but unless the specific monster class is offered in the samples, it may take some time to work out the creature's class levels, and may deter a player from trying something new. |
| Score Content 4/5 Style 4 |
| Parting Shot My recommendation: If you never anticipate wanting to play a monster character, or if, as a DM, you are happy with the existing monsters available in the Monster Manuals and Fiend Folio, spend your money elsewhere. However, if you do not fall into either of those two categories, this is definitely a book to consider adding to your collection. Go to the next review. Return to reviews Return to the Home Page |