Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin
The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin is the latest in Mongoose's Slayer's Guide series, which attempt to give more detailed treatment to a variety of d20 system creatures. Prior titles have addressed hobgoblins, gnolls, centaurs, and amazons. This volume takes a look at the sahuagin, a violent aquatic species.
Those who follow my reviews will recall that I was not too kind to earlier titles in this series. Yet perhaps it is a good time to see how the series is shaping up.
A First Look
The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin is a 32-page, staple-bound softcover book. The book is priced as $9.95 US. This is somewhat expensive for books of this size.
The cover is done in a similar style to previous books in the series: a color illustration of the creature discussed with a stylized gray border. The cover picture depicts two fishlike humanoids (one prominent, one in the background) wielding weapons, swimming in an aquatic environment.
The interior is black-and-white. The layout is similar to the previous Slayer's Guides, with an average size typeface and large header font, but there are fewer section breaks.
The art is a significant improvement over the early volumes. Chris Quilliams (the standout artist from the previous Slayer's Guides) provides an excellent anatomy illustration on the inside cover. He is joined by a variety of other artists, including the excellent Danillo Moretti, who does much of the interior art. Moretti did much of the work in Mongoose's Travellers Tales series; Moretti has a crisp, appealing style much like that of popular CCG artist Quinton Hoover.
A Deeper Look
The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin is divided into a number of categorical sections dealing with physiology, habitat, society, methods of warfare, role-playing, adventure ideas, a sample sahuagin village, and a section full of "stock" sahuagin NPCs. Pretty much the first half of the book is expository in nature; the last half of the book is more mechanical in nature. I found this to be a better balance than previous Slayer's Guides.
The section on physiology discusses such things as how sahuagin swim and breathe, their languages, their senses, and adaptations. Most of this section is exposition, but there are a few mechanical sidebars that give variants that might arise as consequences of the content of the exposition. For example, there are brief rules for sahuagin smelling blood in the water and entering a barbarian rage-like state if injured in the water.
The section on habitat briefly discusses the nature of sahuagin settlements. Being social creatures, they coalesce into extended kingdoms. The section also postulates some history of sahuagin as they exist in a fantasy world.
The section on sahuagin society suggests that religion is a central element of their society. The sahuagin religion consists of three primal god-figures, It That Is Eaten, He Who Eats, and She That Teaches. Under sahuagin theology, certain creatures exist to be eaten, and others to eat. When It That Is Eaten was torn asunder when it had conflicting desires about the natural order, land and sky were created. Thus by sahuagin theology, those on dry land defy the natural order as part of the rebellious aspect of It That Is Eaten.
In sahuagin society, females are largely priests and males are largely warriors and leaders. As with many evil races, advancement through the ranks occurs largely by combat.
This section introduces a number of new rules items. Straightforward guidelines are provided for adding sahuagin nations to your game. There are domains for the sahuagin deities and two new spells, natural presence (calms prey creatures so they cannot react to the sahuagin until the sahuagin attacks) and threshing (sends stunning waves through the water). There are two new short (5-level) prestige classes, royal guard and high priestess; and two new feats, Leaping Attack and Resist Drying.
The Methods of Warfare section discusses the combat tactics and methods that the sahuagin use. This includes the weapons they normally use (such as trident and net) and how different size units act to defeat an enemy. Finally, there are methods for effectively fighting sahuagin - i.e., their eyes are poorly adapted to light and they are adversely affected by fresh water.
The Role-Playing with Sahuagin section is somewhat mislabeled. It does discuss what motivates sahuagin. The upshot, however, is that their most important priority is destruction of land life. This explains well their motivations and likely actions, but leaves little room for peaceful interaction with sahuagin. This seems somewhat a shame to me, and very much taking the easy way out. It seems like the author could have come up with some small wrinkle in sahuagin philosophy that enterprising players could exploit to relate to them with means other than weapons.
The Scenario Hooks and Ideas, Sahuagin Village, and Sahuagin Reference List sections should give GMs the raw material they need to get a campaign against the sahuagin rolling. These sections provide some adventure ideas to get players involved, a sample sahuagin village, and a number of NPCs for use against the players.
Two specific leaders (the ranger Big-fella-bloody-spear and the priestess Talking-talking-talk-to Gods) are provided in the village section, and NPCs in the reference list section are more general, from a 10th-level ranger sahuagin prince, all the way down to lowly sahuagin young. The statistics are generally solid, unlike those in some earlier Slayer's Guides; however, I did find some selections unlikely. For example, why would an evil cleric ever prepare an inflict wounds spell when he can use them spontaneously? That is a relatively minor quibble, though.
Conclusion
Overall, I thought this was a much better book than the earlier Slayer's Guides. It had a better balance of exposition to rules, making it a much more practical book, and the production values have improved markedly. The rules material is solid and would be useful in any campaign involving sahuagin.
I was a little disappointed in one aspect. Despite the fact the book gives readers a little deeper insight into sahuagin, they still cannot effectively be reasoned with and are primarily foes to be met in combat, which makes some of the exposition seem a little wasteful.
That said, I can definitely see a role for this book and other Slayer's Guides the way that they are developing. Often when I buy adventures, I end up deciding that the plot as presented will not work in my game, and I end up gutting it for the usable material (rules, stats, maps, and ideas). This book gives you all of that stuff in raw form, providing you with all the material you need to "roll your own" adventure involving sahuagin that fits your own game.
-Alan D. Kohler
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