Constructs
The Encyclopaedia Arcane series of books by Mongoose Publishing provides players and GMs with new options for arcane spellcasters. Previous volumes in this series include Demonology: The Dark Road, Necromancy: Beyond the Grave, and Chaos Magic: Wild Sorcery.
Constructs: It is Alive focuses on the craft of making animated guardians and assistants for arcane spellcasters.
A First Look
Constructs is a 64-page, perfect-bound softcover book priced at $14.95 US. This is in keeping with Mongoose's past releases in the Encyclopaedia Arcane series. This provides a rate of about 23 cents per page, which is very typical for a book of this size. The book also makes use of the inside back cover for the "summary checklist" that Mongoose books typically include.
The cover is color, with a fairly decent picture by Ralph Horsely depicting a green golem breaking free from its chains while a very worried looking man looks on.
The interior is black and white except for one color picture on the inside of the front cover. The interior artwork is fairly nice, mostly with familiar talents who have already had work in other Mongoose books, such as Danilo Moretti, Eric Lofgren, and Rick Otey.
The typeface is about average. There are many tables and charts, and all are decently organized. The book has about average value for the current market based on content delivered for the price.
A Deeper Look
Constructs is written by a new talent, Alejandro Melchor. Though I have only seen one product by Alejandro to date, it was a pretty small product to judge by: Mongoose's Ships of War.
Constructs is a bit different from prior books in the series. It has no new classes. In fact, is has relatively little in the way of new character options: there are no new feats and relatively few new spells.
What it does have is a well developed system for creating constructs. The system uses existing feats and skills such as the Craft Wondrous Items and Craft Magic Arms & Armor feats and various Craft skills. Essentially, much of the material in the book is a reverse engineering of the stats of golems and other constructs in the Monster Manual, and then it creates a system out of that to provide the GM or player with a ton of options for making construct creatures.
The system divides constructs into three basic types: Golems, Automata, and Simulacra.
Golems are constructs made of a singular material much as is the case of the golems in the 3e Monster Manual. Materials range from wood to steel, gold, or diamond. Unfortunately, the materials of the core d20 system golem - iron, stone, and clay - are not included. This is unfortunate, as these rules could have been used to make variants with different sizes and capabilities. The golems in Constructs share many of the characteristics of those golems. They are only vulnerable to very few spells, though which spells varies by the type of material.
Automata are creatures that have more complex clockwork components, but lack the immunity to magic of golems. Of constructs defined in the d20 System's core rules, automata are exemplified by the shield guardians, but the book provides a variety of different automata designs.
Simulacra are a totally different sort of creature and are typically made of living material such as flesh and blood. Simulacra are created in game terms by applying one of a variety of templates to a given base creature. Templates vary in complexity and the type of creature you can apply it to. For example, a homunculus is a simple creature made from its master's blood. A mockery is a "cheap copy" of an existing creature with no intelligence, which may be applied to an animal, humanoid, monstrous humanoid, plant, or vermin. An eidolon is a construct that is actually better than the base creature it mimics. The resulting creatures are all constructs, but can have intelligence.
When designing a construct, the player or GM may choose the size of the creature and its type. Type is material in the case of golems, one of several function oriented designs (such as wilderness scout or assassin) if an automata, or the template and base creature type and template if a simulacra. That gives you the basic characteristics of the creature such as Hit Die, AC, attacks, and so forth. It also gives you details important to the construction of the construct, such as the required skill checks, Construction Points (CP), Body Rating (BR), and DCs. CPs and BR are used to determine cost and time to make the construct.
In addition to these basic factors, the designer may add other characteristics to the construct. Constructs may have "feats," deficiencies, and special weapons that alter their abilities and CP (and thus price). The feats in this case are characteristics that are added to the golem. These may be real feats as per the core rules, or may be things like proficiency with a melee weapon, extra limbs, improved AC, and so forth.
In addition to that, constructs have a number of special ability "slots" according to their type, and more can be added by purchasing "feats." Each of these gives a special attack or special quality to the golem. For example, you can make your golem emit a lightning storm or give your homunculus the ability to dwell in a pocket dimension until you call it forth.
In addition to the system parts, there are rules for maintenance and repair of constructs, including a few spells for that purpose.
Conclusion
Somehow, I think that many players will pass this up because constructs aren't as popular an idea as demonology or necromancy. This is somewhat unfortunate, because fantasy and SF literature and entertainment is rife with these sorts of creatures. As I read this book, my head was swimming with images of these formative influences: the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the troops of Urza and Mishra in the Magic the Gathering CCG, as well as the alchemical creations of the wizards in Vance's classic Dying Earth books. This is good stuff!
Alejandro's system seems thoughtful and well-written. It should serve as a useful toolkit to come up with a variety of allies and opponents for the PCs. Some people don't like the toolkit approach, but I think this is a wonderful springboard for campaign ideas.
-Alan D. Kohler
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