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Doom Striders
review...
“... In a doom strider, the captain is the ultimate authority. He is mystically bonded with his machine, his life force flows through the conduits and wires of the doom strider as surely as the energy produced by the arcanofurnace. Without its captain, a doom strider is nothing—an oversized, fragile suit of armor with a few weapons strapped on...” (p. 72, “The Role of the Captain”)
Doom Striders is a d20 system, technomagical source book for adding war machines to your campaigns. The book covers the basis of creating these war constructs, their overall construction and several combat uses of the machine before ending with some prestige classes and “typical” non-player characters. The book also features numerous pages of doom strider imagery, and several combat sheets to track damage to the machine.
Doom Striders is not for everyone. The basic concept of heavy-metal war machines is more of a 20th century idea than a pre-Renaissance one. As such, the thought of adding magic-wielding, turret-equipped towering titans of metal (and to be fair, other metals and wood too) to your carefully planned campaign just might derail what you have planned as players want to start adventuring from the back (or with the backing) of a doom strider.
Doom striders, at their most general idea, is noting more than a mechanically animated suit of plate mail powered by magic. Like a modern tank, weaponry is added to increase the doom striders combat effectiveness and possibly increase the need of a crew beyond the doom strider’s captain.
While reading the book, I was struck by the similarities that the doom strider concept had with spelljamers from the late Spelljammer campaign setting. Magic items fuel the striders as they did for the spelljamming dwarven asteroids; spells are sacrificed to provide thrust just as spell slots are “used” by the arcanofurnace of the strider. While similar in usage, its not the same in application. Spelljamming engines didn’t use energy points, as do the striders. And striders don’t need a captain that has spellcasting ability to function. A doom strider destroys magical items to make energy points so that a strider may use all its functions (moving, attacking, etc.).
Doom Striders balances magical might with size and limb limitations. Certain sizes of striders may or may not have a set feature (heads for medium or large size striders, for example). Each limb or body augmentation (armor, weapon arrays, mystic marks, etc.) costs a number of “slots” that keep the strider from becoming a hulking, epic-sized, weapon-encased beast. The slot limitations are based on torso size, and adding a limb (e.g.: legs for movement, which adds its own available slots) takes up a number of slots based on the limb size. Each size category that a strider gets bumped through adds to the overall “cost value” of manufacturing and operating that strider.
The technomagical principals are kept in check by the limits to the captain operating a strider, as well as by its size and body-slot allocation. A captain may not operate a strider with less limbs than itself (or so I took from an example in the book, saying a centaur may not operate a medium-sized strider as its four limbs do not correlate to the centaur’s six [a medium-sized strider can not have more than four limbs, as well]), nor may a captain be easily exchanged, as it takes several hours to make the captain-strider bond. Limiting the strider based on size, and in part by the captain, the book strives to keep a fine balance without trying to make things seem arbitrary, as did the spelljamming engines did.
Other minor notes are the smattering of new skills and some odd feats, as well as two prestige classes. The book as covers mass combat with a doom strider, but as I lack the Oathbound: Arena book, these notes don’t add value to the book for me, though some may find the information engaging.
Overall, Doom Striders tries to add a modern-styled battle mech into a gamut of fantasy settings. While it tries in earnest, it fails to develop a more compelling reason beyond “it seems a cool idea to add to the overwhelming ‘steampunk’ products out there, ours just won’t be steam driven.” I see that with the fantasy use of higher end spells and spellcasters, a warring nation would adapt more to the tactics of Harry Turtledove’s World at War series rather than a mechanized suit of armor with magic missile cannons. It’s a very well thought out book, it just doesn’t add the proper amount of fantasy “magic” for some to make its way into regular play. Others will undoubtably enjoy the ravaging in the pilot seat of a fantasy battle mech, and its for those people that this book is written.
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