|
The Book
of Exalted Deeds is a Dungeons & Dragons accessory hands both players
and Dungeon Masters a few "neat tricks" to bringing the exalted
(think holiness, or extremely benevolent) into a regular campaign. With
variant rules and magical items, the Book of Exalted Deeds seems on
the surface not to qualify for the mature audience sticker pasted to
the cover. Built as a counterpoint to the previous vile title (Book
of Vile Darkness), the Book of Exalted Deeds has some great new material.
The book
introduces some serious issues for the good aligned folks packing around
swords: martyrs, poverty and issues of "waging peace" are
addressed, but not too well defined (which is a good thing). Though
the book could have come across as a more religious-based work, it gladly
doesn't, making the material accessible to many gamers.
Though
presented with the D&D standard layout (if a little more mature
art, more so than Book of Vile Darkness), it avoids introducing any
new races that may have been "exalted" by their history or
connections with the gods. Instead it covers new rules for allowing
characters some bonus for foregoing money (like an Armor Class bonus,
bonus exalted feats, damage reduction, and more) and interesting rules
on sanctified weapons, ravages (good poisons), relics and the like.
The book
also, no surprise, introduces the counter balance to the vile feat type,
the exalted feat. Only good, strongly moral characters (or creatures)
may have these feats. Some of these vary from a +2 bonus on fear or
despairing and mind afflicting effects, like fear spells ("gift
of faith," p. 43) to allowing the character to use their Wisdom
modifier instead of their Strength to hit with a simple weapon ("intuitive
attack," p. 44). Most the exalted feats are okay, with rare great
ones. After the feats section, the book goes into prestige classes,
magic, paragons (instead of demonlords and archdevils) of paradise,
and ends with a section on monsters.
The prestige
classes are geared for a variety of game styles. From the freewheeling
Champion of Gwynharwyf, an exalted type of barbarian raging with diving
fury to the Risen Martyr, a fallen hero returned from their grave. Each
prestige class seems to be built for the wide gaps D&D has for good-aligned
planes, while its easy to paint a picture of evil (adding darkness,
lots of it) it is harder to present a fair picture of good. The Book
of Exalted Deeds does a good part trying to get the good picture across,
but is hampered in the prestige class department by its D&D cosmology.
The book's
magic section follows the D&D line, presenting new spells, magic
items and artifacts. The section ends with some ideas on redeeming evil
magical items, which may help explain the demonhusk armor found earlier
in the section. As some things in D&D are evil for evil sake--that
is, irredeemable evil, the book has notes that are reminiscent of the
older rules for destroying artifacts.
The hardest
part of the book is the paragons section, one for the lack of gaming
history (this characters haven't appeared before like the demonlords
had) and this lack of connection is heightened by the lack of goals
that one angel or another may have. Their descriptions come across more
as creature statistics than a character portrait. Without goals, it
may be hard for a DM to use them as anything other than stage dressing
when the player characters start traveling the planes.
The book
finishes with a section on new, holy creatures that again may come across
the DM's screen as stage dressing. A new creature type is covered, the
deathless, like "undead" but not connected with negative energy.
The aleax reappears, as do archons, bariaurs and hollyphants. Moon dogs,
lesklors (flying holy tigers) and eladrin (celestial fey) also fill
in the section. Saints and sanctified creatures are two new templates
that round out the end of the book.
Overall,
while designed as a counterpoint to the Book of Vile Darkness, the Book
of Exalted Deeds comes across as a better-use package with some rough
spots that could have been better developed. It's a good book, but not
a great one. Some people may find more use for this book, as it's geared
for both players and DMs, instead of just the DM.
|
|
