GOOD
Alderac Entertainment Group – 2002
Written by: Shawn Carmen, Steve Crow, Andrew Getting, Travis Heermann, Mike Mearls, jim pinto, and Douglas Sun
Edited by: D.J. Trindle and Mike Mearls
This year much has been made of exploring the “dark side” of D20’s settings – books like EVIL (to which this is a counterpoint), the Book of Vile Darkness and the like all set out to explore and exploit the kewlness factor inherent in explicit sexual dysfunction, drug use, wanton slaughter and general debauchery and generally these books have been about as deep as the cover art of heavy metal albums of old. I bought this book, breaking my 6-month hiatus from d20 and Dungeons and Dragons, because for the first time in a long time I found myself playing in a game. To compound the shock of this I chose to play a paladin – the most virtuous of heroes and often about as interesting as skim milk. I wanted to see if you can make GOOD as cool (or at least as ‘kewl’) as playing anti-heroes and villains.
Introduction
The book begins with a quote from Calvin Coolidge – “No person was ever honored for what he had received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave”. This sets the tone for GOOD upfront – you do not get into the do-gooding business for the fame and the glory, you do it because you think it’s the right thing to do and it’s worth putting it all on the line for. I do disagree with the rest of the introduction – it seems written from an earlier time (no one likes the villain? Were the sales of EVIL that bad? In an era after Spawn, Ozzie Osborne and the World of Darkness can consider evil to be uncool or unpopular) and almost made me put the book back on the shelf. If this was the holier-than-thou tone of the book then I would be better off ignoring it completely.
Chapter One: The Righteous
The first chapter of the book handles, as the title suggests, the very absolute best of mortal goodness – the good alignment. I can hear people screaming the very valid arguments about why alignment is stupid, but since this book considers alignment an essential part of the game I’ll keep them in mind but the arguments are not entirely on topic. The characterization of the various ‘Good’ alignments is somewhat silly and more of the same pap from the introduction – Chaotic Good is seen as a vigilante, Neutral Good is the everyman’s good (and indecisive and wishy-washy as a result) while Lawful Good is almost mechanical in the lack of any wiggle room within its code of conduct. As you can see I don’t agree entirely with these notions – I’ve always found Lawful Good to be as badly portrayed as the evil alignments, and this write-up, torn between the divine mandate of Good and its slavish devotion to temporal Law is just more of the same. Beyond the alignments, come discussions about using Good as the antagonists in a game. The path taken by these paragraphs is safe and well-traveled: good as rivals, good as an absolute, misguided good, arrogant paladins, religious squabbles and the like.
The next couple of pages expand the paladin from the Lawful Good paragon to “Champion of Good” giving guidelines on how to make non-Lawful paladin types. What makes this section better from others that do the same is the attention to detail paid to the various abilities of the paladin and how they fit the role of champion. It shows not only how but why – something I love to see in toolkits and discussions, and something I think that actually makes discussions like these usable to DMs and players alike because it gives a reason for the powers instead of just a list of “swap and shop” powers. Two complete writeups for Chaotic and Neutral paladins, based on the interpretations of the alignments given earlier, are presented.
Moving onto the less martial champions of virtue are the alternate “Cleric” types – the Priest and the Adherent. The Priest is simply a less combat skilled version of the cleric that I like precisely for that reason. It is not as modular as the cleric (at least on the surface) but makes up for the lack of hit dice and combat potential with more skills/skill points, and the ability to call down miracles (the ability to use their spontaneous magic to use any spell instead of just healing energy), social benefits (an iffy concept – I usually don’t like putting setting/social benefits in a character class) and the rather broken power of “Favoured of the Gods” – a way that priests can kill opponents who hurt them just because God likes the priest more than their attacker. The Adherent is a “NPC class”, basically a watered down version of the cleric (d4 hit points instead of d8, but keeping a reduced spell ability). I don’t know about the idea of NPC classes – I don’t like them being so restrictive because they work perfectly well as PC classes in lower-powered settings.
Chapter Two: Hero
Here we move from the people who serve Good as a job requirement to those who do it voluntarily – the hero. Now, Exalted’s developer Geoff Grabowski calls a hero anyone who can and does go beyond the mundane – for good or bad but the hero in this book wears only a white hat (although the rules could be just as easily used for evil heroes). The rules in this section break from d20’s sacred nature of “balance” – it provides situational bonuses based on motivation instead of something more mechanical like a magic sword. Heroes in D&D/d20, in order to be, you know, ‘heroic’, have to bend the rules somewhat: they wade through the villain’s extras without a scratch (something that is unlikely in the attrition-fest of d20 combat), they leap in the way to take blows for friends and innocents (something previously only possible via feats or prestige class abilities) and they seem to grow in power and ability when fighting the good fight as opposed to everyday encounters (something that is done in games like Exalted, Chivalry and Sorcery or Ars Magica but not in “an orc is an orc is an orc” d20).
The Hordes rules – essentially creating an “extras” or “Stormtrooper” rule for D&D is a great concept, although they restrict it from arcane spellcasters (something I see as a little too play balance focused). Generally speaking – if you are fighting a group of villains who are not important to the plot of the story and are so below your ability then you sort fo breeze over the combat – allowing characters to “instant-kill” handfuls of them with simple single die rolls, leaving the crunchy duel-like hit point combat for the main villains. The rule seems to work quite well actually.
The next rule – heroic traits and action dice – is a lot trickier and I’m not quite as pleased with the execution. The problem with such “emotion” rules, many people have pointed out, is that they can be abused easily – usually by carefully wording the trait so as to be so broadly interpreted that practically every action from brushing your teeth to walking the family dog reap the benefits of the situational bonus. The actual rules used call for heroic characters gaining a “trait” once per level with goals attached (defeated or obtained goals are freely switched out for new ones), situations in which these traits come into play add a number of d6s (reminiscent of Force Points and similar “added dice” rules are used) that they have accumulated, or spend these dice to instead improve their efforts in other ways (allowing the use of an untrained skill, making automatic critical attacks, and such). The idea is to reward the character for keeping in character as a hero – and therein lies the problem. The options for traits is so open-ended that unless you are playing against genre (playing a hero in a fantasy noir) almost every real adversity you face will involve a heroic trait – a frequency which can only get higher since you accumulate traits at a rate of 1 per level. Now there is some attempt to moderate this with “Trouble Dice” and penalties for acting against your heroic trait but the damage is already done. The mechanics are open to abuse and the only thing stopping it is a firm DM, which is often the case but I know of too many people who seem willing to challenge the DM if they think they can browbeat them into submission (and too many DMs that seem to lack the spine to stand up to players who abuse rules like these).
New feats come in after the heroic rules. The feats roughly fall into two categories – feats for the divine champion of good (be they clerics, paladins or simply very pious PCs) and heroics (where the only pre-requisite is the Good alignment). Of the two groups I prefer the heroic ones – this is how heroic traits should have been handled: most Heroic feats allowing some one-time/once per day bonus to a skill roll or removing some penalty, but only when doing something heroic. For example, one feat gives the hero a 2 to hit and fear saving throws only when against an opponent with a CR higher than the hero’s character level. Now, taking into consideration that a CR level means “4 characters of equivalent level will expend 20% of their resources and hit points attacking ONE creature of equivalent CR level and have a reasonable chance of success” that bonus is not quite so easy to obtain, let alone is it broken enough to make the combat a cakewalk. Other such heroic feats allow for the hero to “Take 10” on a skill in a stressful situation (normally not allowed), one-time bonuses of 5 to a saving throw or 4 to a damage roll or inspiring allies to greater acts of valor (much like a Bard’s performance abilities).
Finally the chapter ends with Prestige Classes. Now I dislike most prestige classes – I find them too generic, and often the balance in the details is off. The prestige classes here seem very familiar to the ones presented in Defenders of the Faith, the official splatbook from Wizards of the Coast. The list includes variants on the Bard, Assassin (for those Batman types), Fighter and Ranger, as well as the Paladine (the basic paladin class as a prestige class – at long last!), the Hospitaler (the closest to what a prestige class should be – an organization), the Divine Healer (uber-healing pacifists), the Shadow Seeker (the conspiracy paladins), Wandering Defenders and Highwaymen (for Robin Hood types) and the White Magician (for Gandalfs). The execution of these classes is generally better than most I’ve seen speaking of both generic prestige classes and ones dedicated to the same subject as GOOD.
Chapter Three: Magic
The magic chapter is perhaps the weakest bit of this book – and that is both telling by the strength of the other chapters and by the weakness in this chapter. It begins with summoning good outsiders – their basic personalities and such. The point of view taken is that unlike general summoning or hostile summoning where the summoner is in a contest of wills to dominate the summoned creature to obey, the summoning of good outsiders in the service of good is more like ringing up a friend to come over and help you move – they are willing to do it and will sometimes go above and beyond what is required of them to do the deed. While this of course, implies that Evil outsiders will not help the service of evil when called by evil summoners, or that good outsiders won’t always like being summoned the idea has its heart in the right place but it gives good another rather unfair advantage.
The spells themselves are mostly of the upper level of the spell lists – usually level 4 and up. The most glaring and rather unfortunate obvious error not caught by Mike Mearls or D.J. Trindle are the paladin spell levels – not one is below of 4 (okay) and many are higher. That’s right, higher than level 4… forgot for a moment that these are not epic spells by any means (Dormant Energy – a level 6 (!) paladin spell is only a level 5 Cleric/Bard spell) or that paladins only HAVE four spell levels. The result is rather ridiculous. The power level of the spells is not exactly as high as one would think reading their spell level in the rules. Baptism of Faith allows the cleric to gain a 1 to their spell DCs per child baptized. The spell has a permanent duration. Even at a level 9 effect this is both rather broken (since you could, in a year, have 365 to your DCs) and rather low-powered (there is no effect on the child, and it’s a 9th level spell – greater than even most NPC clerics/adherents which violates the setting reason for the spell) – it would make much more sense for the spell to have an effect on the child (a bonus to saves against moral corruption, or granting the child the Iron Will feat for free), and for the spell to be more of a true ritual (like Relics and Rituals, say level 1 or 2).
The magic items are a disappointing mish mash of elements, mostly simple variations on common items from either the Core Rules or from Defenders of the Faith splat. The holy relics and artifacts section of the magic chapter is by far better – combining both good grasp of legends and myths with mechanical effects. At the end of the Magic section is an artifact (Tattoo of Divine Will) that elevates the user, for a year, into a sort of semi-divine being – something I think would have worked better as either a prestige class or in fact as a template. As written it is useless to a character since for the duration of the effect the character simply is a vessel for the deity who crafted the tattoo: i.e. they are NPCs.
Chapter Four: Heroic Legions
This chapter supposedly deals with allies in the cause of good but starts out with a “faith” point system that seems like an beta-test for a much better system. The idea is to measure how faithful your hero is to the virtues of a deity – you are rewarded with miracles and favors the higher your score and punished with gaeas and curses if you score badly. The problem is that it is really only half there (I’m still trying to figure out what a starting character has for a Faith Score) and second that it really has nothing to do with “Goodness” in any specific way. It is best to skip these rules altogether and go to the organizations – but wait, the organizations use the boon/bane stuff of the faith points system! Ugh. Scrap this and go from the write ups and non-faith point mechanics of the groups. The orders range from the bland (Arcane Bureaucracy) to the quite well done (Dellania, Lady of Wanderers). Next come heroic orders – think Robin’s band of merry men, the Argonauts, or Knights of the Round Table. These benefit from the fact that they aren’t tied to that horrible faith system so there’s no gamey aftertaste to them. Included with the heroic orders (but not with the religious ones) are mechanics on how to make these orders – how big are they, how much influence do they have, etc. Each order has a stat block and levels (ranks) much like a character class but advancement is more based on role-playing and tithing properly.
Chapter Five: New Monsters
This section is quite good marked by the obvious blandness of stating out creatures that Good PCs will never fight against. In here is the Aether Paladin (Good Wraiths that hunt incorporeal undead, only they are outsiders not actual undead), Celestial Griffons (because you can’t simply make a celestial template and leave it at that), Elemental Guardians (ditto), Evangels (yet more angels), the Fairfiend (my favourite – a good aligned otyugh-looking things that roam the dark places in creation helping heroes), the Paladin Wolf (the opposite of the Worg), and the Spirit Pilgrim. The monsters themselves follow the usual thing about D&D/d20 creatures – they look boring but have better combat stats than Evil creatures of the same general type (compare the power level of the Solar to a Pit Fiend or a Balor to see what I mean) and again, specific monsters are created where templates would have been much more helpful and expanded things much better.
Conclusions:
I liked and will use some of what is here in the book – particularly the feats – for my own character, and if I were running another d20 game I would likely include the rules from chapter 2 (although I’d change the Heroic Traits into a feat-like system) and use the variant paladins/paladine prestige class combination. The rest fo the book is, quite frankly, a bit fo a let down. IT is less about making good guys cool as it is about adding confusing, unnecessary systems that make being Good the equivalent to being a robot controlled by angels and gods instead of thinking, conscious champions of virtue. The chapters, except the magic one, are well done, but the message they carry is not a particularly winning endorsement for playing ‘Good’. It is more of a Vorlon’s “obey” than a hero’s “with power comes responsibility”.
Style: 4, very solid style-wise, nice clean layout, no distracting/bad art
Substance: 3, I can’t give it any better because it fails the Chupp Test.
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