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Okay, okay, to be fair, the book isn't "Planescape 3.x." I may be just a little giddy in my love of Planescape.
Though one might think at first that this might just be some kind of rehash of the Manual of the Planes, it's not. It's very different. The primary difference is that this book is written from a player's side (thus the subtitle: A Player's Guide to the Planes) whereas MotP was a DM kinda book.
Enough babble! On to the main meat of the review!! I'll skip the Introduction below because it's just a summary of chapters, essentially.
Artwork The artwork is decent. Nothing that makes me drool (and maybe I've gotten spoiled by Eberron), but not too much that makes me want to tear out my eyeballs.
Chapter One: Races Aptly named, this chapter deals with..races. Counting all of the types of mephlings, there are a dozen races here. Aasimar, bariaurs (again), buomman (worst. race. EVAR.), mephlings (air, earth, fire and water; mephit/humanoid offspring), neraphim ("they're slaad, but..they're not slaad), shadowswyfts (planetouched with ancestry from the Plane of Shadow), spikers (spiky humanoids from Achereon), tieflings and wildren (half-animal, half-humanoid creatures..y'know, for cat and bunny girls and the like).
Of all the new races only the buomman (worst race ever), neraph and spikers have a +0 level adjustment. The rest are all +1 races.
Tieflings have always been one of my favorite races, and that hasn't changed with this book. Wildren are just...I don't know. Something about them irritates the heck out of me. And the buomman...oh, lordy the buomman.
Why do the buomman suck so badly? To quote the book.
Buommans take a vow against speech at an extremely early age, after which they simply rfuse to engage in traditional forms of communication. A buomman who breaks this vow takes 1 point of Wisdom damage and takes a -2 penalty on attack rolls, saves and checks for 24 hours afterward. (If the buomman breaks the vow again before 24 hours have passed, he takes an additional point of Wisdom damage, and his penalty on attack rolls, saves and checks persists for another 24 hours). A buomman spellcaster who wishes to cast spells with a verbal component must take the Silent Spell metamagic feat or else have the Nonverbal Spell feat.
You'd think a race that doesn't talk would at least get telepathy as a natural ability, right? Wrong. The main reason I don't like them is that I can definitely see them being problematic in a campaign, if not with the character than with some of the players.
Not to mention the fact that the Nonverbal Spell feat irks me.
Oh, and for the astute, yes, there is a difference (that smells like "retcon" to me) between the bariuars here and the bariaurs in the Book of Exalted Deeds (also known as exalted bariuars).
Next up are some age, height and wweight charts for the new races.
Now the book gives us five "Powerful races" using Savage Species style racial writeups. We have the Avoral Guardian (a 15-level racial class), Chain Devil (a 14-level racial class), Hound archon (an 11-level racial class), Janni (another 11-level racial class) and the Lillend (a 13-level racial class).
Now, as a personal note, I was never fond of Savage Species and their "monster class" writeups. However, in the absence of some better way to let people play freaky monsters starting at 1st level, I guess this is acceptable. Plus, the idea of playing a chain devil does sound kinda cool. On another personal note, I REALLY hate the picture of the hound archon.
Chapter Two: Classes and Feats Chapter two starts out with planar substitution levels. These are levels that you can "trade out" for when you reach a certain level in various classes, provided you meet the requirements. For example, a barbarian can at 3rd, 7th and 11th-level, instead of the normal barbarian class abilities, take planar substitution levels, gaining Portal Sense at 3rd level, Planar Damage Reduction at 7th and Menacing Rage at 11th.
The idea is kind of neat, but for some reason the way they initiated it is somehow...clunky. It might be very nifty in a planar-hopping plane, but it still feels clumsy.
Next up we have feats. A new type of feat is given here, Heritage Feats, for characters who, for instance, claim descent from a being from the elemental plane of air. There are 12 heritage feats and 11 general feats.
The general feats are sort of a mixed bag. Celestial and Fiendish summoning sound okay, but ones like the Neraph Charge and Neraph Throw initially seem overpowered in the hands of a rogue (lets you deny a target their Dexterity bonus by faking them out). Sure, it helps that once you pull the trick on an opponent they won't be fooled again that combat, so perhaps it's not as whack as it seems at first.
I have a special dislike of nonverbal spell. Mechanically, it's sound (no pun intended). It lets you cast spells with a verbal component without actually uttering the verbal component (though you still have to make some sort of sound). I just have this horrible image of a buomman wizard making Tarzan-like gorilla-speech grunting sounds while casting a spell.
Chapter Three: Prestige Classes And so the Planescaping begins. I really don't mind this (except for the fact that I'm planning on starting up an Eberron camapign, not a Planescape campaign), but some who didn't like Planescape (do those people exist?) might not like such a large chunk of prestige classes being ripped from the pages of PS.
The majority of the prestige classes in this section are geared towards various factions. Thus, we have prestige classes for the Athar, the Doomguard, the Fated, the Mind's Eye, the Sensates, the Transcendant Order and the Xaositects.
Other PrCs? are the Astral Dancer (who excels in zero-G enviornments) and the Elemental Warrior.
As has seemingly become the standard, a statblock is included for a member of each PrC. Personally, I'm torn on this practice. On one hand, that's space that could be used for other info. On the other hand, they could be handy when you need an encounter and don't have/don't feel like writing one up.
Chapter Four: Equipment & Magic Items Here we have some new equipment. New weapons, new armor, new gear (I can see fireproof clothing becoming a hot topic in some groups), new mounts and vehicles (because you can't play Spacejammer without some vehicles), special substances (mostly just lawful and chaotic variations on holy/unholy water, but there are some nifty items in here) and a handful of magic items (weapon and armor abilities, staffs, rings and a few wondrous items).
All in all, this is a pretty good chapter, with a little something for everyone.
Chapter Five: Spells First off, we get Planar Domains. These are like normal domains, but are tied to various planes. Kind of a neat idea.
Next up are a bunch of spells. Some of these spells appear to be reprints of spells from BoED and BoVD, but without the Corrupt or..uh..whatever the Exalted components were.
There are about 75 spells in all, give or take, with a hefty dose of Summon (specific creature) type spells, such as Summon Elementite Swarm. The spells seem to be all pretty cool and fairly useful, and nothing sticks out as unbalanced or intrinsically sucky.
Chapter Six: Creatures of the Planes One of the few non-PC sections of the book, this chapter presents several creatures and templates.
Templates: Anarchic Creature, Axiomatic Creature, Entropic Creature and Vivacious Creature
Creatures: Astral Kraken, Dharculus, Frost Dwarf, Elementite Swarm (Air, Earth, Fire, Water), Elsewhale (just absofrickinlutely ridiculous..it's a planar-travelling whale that can carry passengers in its' spit bubble), Elysian Thrush, Energon (Xac-Yel, Xac-Yu?, Xap-Yaup?, Xong-Yong?, Xor-Yost? and Ding-Dong?. Okay, I made that last one up), Gaspar, Fire Gnome, Limbo Stalker, Lesser Nightmare, Pack Fiend, Shadow Jelly (new oozes! Yay!!), Unraveller, Ur'Epona and Void Ooze.
A nice addition is a list of what creatures can be called with which Summon Monster spells.
Overall a pretty nifty selection of creatures with the Elysian Thrush at CR 1/4 al the way up to the Astral Kraken at CR 16.
Chapter Seven: Planar Sites Next up, we have the section actually on the planes, starting with an overview of the standard D&D cosmology (though few details are given on specific planes).
Next, we have Planar Metropolises, along with maps! The City of Brass, Sigil (yay Sigil! Go Planescape!!) and Tu'narath (includes stats for Vlaakith the Lich-Queen).
Planar Breaches are covered next, including a random chart to tell you what traits mgiht bleed over.
Planar Touchstones are next. This is an..odd..thing. Basically, if you have an item tied to a particular area that you control on another plane, you gain various powers. The next 30 or so pages give you examples of planar areas that can be used as planar touchstones.
Personally, I think too much space was spent on the planar touchstones.
Appendix The appendix deals with creating a plane-specific random encounter table.
And there you have it.
How useful? For a standard campaign, or one that follows fairly closely the Great Wheel cosmology (such as the Realms), a lot of use could be gained from this book. If you wanted to play a Planescape campaign, you should by now have everything you need to do so. If you are playing in Eberron (like I plan to), you'll either have to try to hammer stuff in there or get significantly less use out of the book.
While it's not a 'bad' book, it left me somewhat...blah. I don't know how to describe it. I liked it, but a part of me just found it..lackluster.
