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Section 1: The Player's Handbook Rewrite, chapters 1, 2, half of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
This part can itself be split up a couple ways.
Chapter 1 is basic character generation. It's actually worse than the PHB. The PHB has a 10 step system, referencing various chapters, for how to make your character. All on 1 page. Honestly, I think that's one of the best things any RPG rulebook could have for the first page. PO:S&P does away with this, and just offers 20 random background additions. They're completely optional, but add spice to a character that might otherwise be bland. The more characters in a party the more interesting stories come out from matching the random backgrounds. You can also just go through and pick one, it's just as beneficial. This part could easily be used with any game. Decent, albeit quite weak. Then again considering what AD&D was at the time, it was a welcome improvement.
It also introduces the concept of character points. While they seem straight forward when explained, it's actually quite a hassle as they're spread throughout chapters 3, 4, 6 and 7, and it would really be better if they had a table somewhere to match up all your starting character points instead of presenting them differently for race, class, NWPs and WPs. I think I'd need a spreadsheet to be able to handle things the way they're presented.
It includes new score generation schemes, which are welcome. Some of them are hard to differentiate, but they offer a good balance of the very gritty scores offered by 3d6 in order, no rerolls to being able to control higher scores and a variety of point buy options.
Chapter 2 is ability scores. It introduces split stats. Essentially, each core stat is split in two. Strength into Stamina & Muscle, Dexterity into Aim & Balance, Constitution into Health & Fitness, Intelligence into Reason & Knowledge, Wisdom into Intuition and Willpower, and Charisma into Leadership & Appearance. These were no doubt in response to complaints that the standard 6 ability scores didn't offer enough variety. They were split up logically, which isn't a huge problem for everything except Strength. The issue is that Stamina covers weight allowance, and Muscle covers everything else. It's the obvious twink stat, and with the rules as written actually allows a non-warrior to have +7 melee damage equivalent to Strength 19. This is due to the fact that subability scores don't have to abide by racial maximums for stats and non-warriors don't get percentile strength. Considering PO:S&P is essentially codified houserules, it's annoying that you have to do some form of house ruling to deal with it. There's also the notion that you have to buy into it at 1 point per 10%, but 18/01 and 18/50 and everything in between are the same score. It was meant to be rolled, not to be bought with points. The only way to deal with this is to get rid of percentile strength altogether, removing one of the advantages of warriors, and re-write the strength scale with 18/01-50 being 19, 18/51-75 being 20, etc, so that 19 is 24 and the scale tops out at 30, and monsters such as Vampires and Ogres being adjusted accordingly, and returning them to the supernatural strength they were supposed to have in the first place. Part of this is a problem with percentile strength, it just shouldn't have existed in the first place. It is still a problem though with the actions derived from Muscle far outweighing the actions derived from Stamina. To show how ugly it is, with the optional method for splitting stats, according to the rules, you can have a fighter with 18/00 Stamina and 22 Muscle. Obviously this won't be happening too much, but that creates a first level character with a +4 melee attack adjustment, +10 melee damage adjustment, and the ability to smash magically locked doors 70% of the time. Combine that with weapon specialisation in long spear and you have a level 1 fighter who has an effective THAC0 of 15 and does 2d6+12 vs small and medium and 3d6+12 vs large creatures. A standard Ogre has a maximum hp of 37, and an average of 23. Given 3 attacks every 2 rounds for specialisation, more than half the time you'll have a first round kill, and about one third of the time you'll have a 1 hit kill. Given a 1/100 chance of getting 18/100 this wouldn't be too bad, not much of a difference from 3d6+8 with standard percentile strength. But as I mentioned earlier a non warrior could even pull of 18 stamina, 22 muscle with luck, and with no luck could pull of 16 stamina 20 muscle. If you're taking a single 1st level character and putting him through an adventure designed for 4-6 5th-7th level characters, that's fine. If you're planning on having a party, it wildly unbalances things. The easiest fix is to get rid of percentile strength, since the rest of the scores advance reasonably well, even though it leads to characters reliably being immune to 1st and 2nd level illusions. It also has some problems for min-maxing with other stats, certain sub-stats make good dumps for certain classes - Priests will want to use Willpower as a dump stat and build up intuition for their bonus spells and everyone else has absolutiely no use for Intuition and will want to build up Willpower for the magical defense adjustment and the potential spell immunity.
I like the system overall, although I might like to expand it to rolling each sub stat individually instead of rolling and then splitting - mainly for more character variety and less min-maxing opportunity. It also leaves some options for combining sub stats, such as combining Stamina and Fitness into one stat, leaving Muscle and Health separate. Aim and Balance are fine separately, but Reason and Intuition could also be easily combined. Appearance could be easily dropped, depending on how people want to handle NPC reactions. Overall it's cool, even though it illustrates much more clearly how stupid percentile strength was to begin with (and, how stupid Donovan and Niles were for not writing it out, as was done with Dark Sun Revised).
I don't really have a problem with min-maxing, I just have a problem when there's no mechanical penalty for the min part, turning it into pure maxing. D&D was designed around random rolling, where I high scores were a gift and couldn't be easily had, so it can end up broken when you throw a few changes in that the system wasn't designed in mind with.
Chapter 3 is character races. It has the standard PHB races, plus half-orcs and half-ogres - nice, it was annoying having to reverse engineer them from the rough stats in the MM, which hinted that half-orcs had a maximum strength stat of 21. It also has most of the races from the Complete Book of Humanoids, but done in a different fashion from the core races. I'll just be talking about the core races right now.
The nice thing is it allows some variety in your elves, dwarves and halflings. More so than the hairfoot/tallfellow variety in the PHB. Want an elf that can't detect secret doors but has an animal companion instead? You've got it. Especially if it doesn't make sense to you that a woodland creature can detect secret doors. It also has some combination min-maxing opportunities. Mages can't use bows or swords, so why pay for the +1 bonus with swords and bows if you can get it with daggers instead, and have some points left over for only needing 4 hours of sleep? That's a much more ideal for a mage than what elves start with. Dark elves however, even though magic resistance has been dropped, still end up being worth a bit more than what they cost as a package. Admittedly 120' of infravision isn't worth twice as much as 60' of infravision, even 30' or 10' is an advantage over none at all, but it's still beneficial.
There's also something annoying. Elves get 45 points to spend, along with Dwarves and Gnomes. Halflings get 35 points, Half-elves get 25 points, Half-orcs and Half-ogres get 15 points and Humans get 10 points. That's a pretty blatant admission that the races are unbalanced. I can't believe it's actually that difficult for them to back track and think of some history and non-combat related advantages for half-orcs and half-ogres to bring them up to the same character point level. Humans are just given the advantage of being "versatile", but that's only a benefit culturaly, it's a useless advantage on the party level.
There's a bright side too though. It's pretty easy to house rule all the races having the same point levels, and bringing over some options from the other races. Humans could easily make use of the weapon bonuses without seeming different, half-orcs and half-ogres could reasonably get the dwarven and halfling saving throw modifiers for high constitution, half-orcs could get underground direction sense, there's no reason for any race not to have an animal companion that's appropriate for their back ground.
This is the second time (and it's only chapter 3), that an addition comes around that essentially needs to be house-ruled to fix. This is a bit annoying given that these are supplementary rules, you shouldn't have to house rule house rules. The bright side is they give some inspiration for, and facillitate making an easy house rule to balance things out. This can go hand in hand with the no level caps or class restriction house rule a lot of people want to throw in, that made it into 3rd edition anyway.
The spirit of the chapter is also appreciate it. It's definitely nice to have a character that has some variety from the standard races presented in the PHB. I think a certain amount of play could be had from the base races, but eventually they get a bit stale. This does a good job of spicing some life back into them.
Chapter 4 is Classes. This is to classes what most of chapter 3 was to races. It also has some problems with imbalance. With the options to custom select Ranger abilities, you can make a Ranger that does everything a fighter does, and more. The only downside to that is the slower experience tables, and some races don't have access to the Ranger class. (This becomes nullified by the above mentioned house rule of no racial class restrictions) I'm also disappointed by the lack of fix for the wonky experience tables. Druids go from being a bit slower than Priests, to much faster up to 9th or 10th level, and then slow to a crawl, not being able to beat 15th level as fast as a Wizard gets to 19th level. From a game perspective it's interesting having to balance out the right race/class combination based on level caps and expectations of how long a campaign will last, but from a roleplaying perspective it can get annoying. What is nice, in the context of level caps, is certain abilities that normally come later for a character, can be had earlier, which is beneficial for races that have really low level caps but still want something meaningful from their class. Again, overall it's good to add some variety to your character, you can have your character mechanics more closely match your character, although like any point system it can lead to min-maxing. If you take an optional race that can't use armour (for example centaurs have some difficulty, alaghi and thri-kreen definitely can't wear normal armour) and they get natural AC bonuses, so you can get extra points for a "limitation" that fighters can't wear any armour. This also ties in with not paying for a +1 sword and +1 bow bonus if you're going to be a mage that can't use either without a -5 penalty. Nothing wrong with optimising your class to match your race so you have no wasted benefits, but it can also lead to some annoying min-maxing. Fortunately the nature of AD&D doesn't allow perfect coordination, but combining subability score optimisation, racial optimisation and class optimisation can lead to a character that's effectively as powerful as the average character 2 or 3 levels higher.
Chapter 5 is Character Kits. Kits are add ons to classes that suggest non mechanical character choices (such as requiring a good portion of money to be spent on armour or weapons - you could do this anyway, but with a kit it's required), along with some small mechanical benefits and a mechanical or non-mechanical restriction. For instance explorers get the Survival NWP for free, and have the disadvantage that they can't settle down - that's not much of a disadvantage for most adventurers. If the campaign doesn't allow it, then there are undoubtably other kits that would provide a benefit but not have a roleplaying disadvantage since you'd be doing it anyway. The kits presented in PO:S&P aren't game breakers, they provide small benefits, but are not on the same scale as the optimisation that's possible with chapters 2, 3 and 4. Kits in other supplements however, are broken (Elven Spellblade or Bard Swashbuckler anyone?).
Chapter 6 is Non Weapon Proficiencies. This is the first chapter I don't have any complaints about. It replaces the highly ability score dependent NWP scores in the PHB, with scores that can be modified by your subabilities (sometimes you get to chose which one would be best for you if they give more than one associated subability), but the amount of points spent are more important. All characters have twice the number of NWPs they would normally have to spend as character points, and NWPs cost 2, 3 or 4 points to start with. The base score ranges from 5-9, modified by your relevant subability topping at +5 for a score of 18+ (higher scores than 18 give no benefit, which compensates for the imbalance possible from scores of 20 or higher in chapter 2). Additional CPs can be spent at 1 per level per NWP (more with DM permission) to increase the score by one point. This is a huge disadvantage for characters with high starting scores, but makes things more fair for characters with lower scores. Someone with a Strength/Stamina score of 9 getting a NWP at 8 with no modifier for the score won't notice a difference from a PHB character with Strength 9 getting the NWP at Strength -1. The same ability for someone with a Strength of 18 would be 13 with PO:S&P at first level and 17 with the PHB would probably not be nearly as happy with the change.
I really like the makeover of the NWP system, it's an improvement that really doesn't have any drawbacks. The ability to increase NWPs is also welcome, and evidently an answer to complaints that they were too static.
This chapter also includes traits and disadvantages, which are included because they are bought from the same pool of points as NWPs. They're minor bonuses like immunity to natural cold or good eye sight that let someone make an archer with hawk eyes and actually have some mechanical representation of it.
Chapter 7 is Weapon Proficiencies. Strangely equipment is also included in this chapter, instead of being it its own chapter. It wouldn't have been a burden to add an extra chapter and keep the pages the same. There's a general problem of disorginasation in this book, and this is one of the minor examples of it. WPs have generally the same makeover as NWPs, and allow non-warriors to get weapon specialisation, although Wizards for example can't specialise until 10th level, and have to select weapon preference and weapon expertise before they can specialise. Weapon Mastery is also available to fighters, rangers and paladins, although single class fighters can get it for 2 character points, multiclass fighters and rangers and paladins can get it for 8, and must wait until a higher level, which offers some measure of niche protection for the fighter when Priests can buy weapon specialisation at first level as an option.
The improvement isn't quite as good as the improvements to the NWP system comparatively, although considering AD&D is combat oriented, there isn't as much room for improvement. It is a nice fleshing out of the system, adding a couple steps between proficiency and specialisation, and a step above specialisation.
Chapter 8 is new schools of magic. There's nothing special about it, a blurb on the new schools, and a spell list from 1st to 9th levels, of existing spells that also overlap into these new spells. Some of them are from the PHB, some are from the Complete Wizard's Handbook and some from the Tome of Magic. Since I have neither I'm not sure how redundant they are, but it is nice to not have to buy either for these additions (and they provide a good example of how new schools could be created). Even if you don't have ToM or CWH, the lists are useful as there aren't any levels which are missing spells if you can only use the PHB.
The sections I've reviewed so far earn a 4 for substance. The potential they offer is great, but the need to throw in house rules to fix things and really bring AD&D up to date, instead of the half step it was for 1995, keep it from getting a 5. The potential for gratuitous min maxing might even earn a 3, but there isn't a flexible system that isn't vulnerable to it (that has a decent measure of crunch) so I can't dock points for seeing it there (especially when I enjoy doing some min-maxing myself, as long as it's agreed upon with everyone else in the game).
The next part is the second half of chapter 3. This is basically The Complete Book of Humanoids Lite. It essentially has a paragraph writeup for 21 additional races, 3 tables indicating minimum and maximum ability scores, allowed classes and max levels, and AC bonuses and special abilities. Taken in the context of allowing extra flexibility, it's reasonable that they didn't offer the same character point customisation for any of these races as for the core ones, although it would be easy to graft on the half-orc and half-ogre ones to bugbears, hobgoblins, goblins, orcs, ogres, and probably a few others without difficulty. Some also have some strange abilities such as shapechanging (Swanmays), flying (Aaracockras) and paralysing bites (Thri-Kreen), so offering customisation options would have probably been something of a nightmare if they wanted to fit everything into 192 pages. Although really, this part offered nothing the CBoH didn't offer, so it's almost as if this was filler. Considering the layout confusion, it would have been better had it just not been included and the extra available space was used as white space for better chapter organisation.
I give this section a 3, based on the fact that it has a marginally balanced system for non-standard races, and has dealt with all the leg work in back converting humanoids with more than 1HD. There's really nothing special to it though, so it doesn't warrant a higher score.
Chapter 9 is Psionics. I really wonder why they included it. It's a minor revision of the system offered in the Complete Psionics Handbook, essentially doing a bit of rearranging, adding in Mental THAC0 and Mental AC and removing maintenance cost for powers. They also have a few re-written powers, so you could actually with this book make a psionicist - it has all the necessary rules for one, although being sparse. If it's taken as an add-on to the PHB, and you figured whatever you pay for it is worth it and less than getting the Complete Psionics Handbook by itself, then this might be worthwhile. The down side is you can't use the character point system with the class. You can't use the new NWP system. And the WP system would be dicey. It also barely meshes with the new subability system. If you already have the CPsH, the modifications are marginal, and provide absolutely no benefit for adapting psionicists to the PO:S&P system. This is another section that feels like filler.
I give this a 2. It's sub par just as a minor psionics pamphlet, might warrant a 3 if it was an update pamphlet of maybe 32 pages and only intended as such. Considering it's in this book, it's almost entirely useless, except for Wild Talents.
Overall, the book warrants a 2 in style. The organisation is horrible, the fact that it's inconsistent with itself is only forgivable in that it gives some new ideas and the majority of it is still usable. It seems like they were scrambling, tried to get too much in to accomodate settings like Dark Sun, but not actually having enough time to get it out. A full 44 pages are completely useless with the rest of the book, and another 6 are only marginally useful and could have been left out just as easily. 142 pages of useful content. If they'd taken the time to write it a bit better, improve the layout, and maybe playtest it, it would have made a very good 160 page supplement that would warrant a 4 or maybe a 5.
Substance wise, it has some, but I can't give it better than a 3. If you're paying $2 for it, then if you find a couple useful things (like the NWP system) that improve your game, then it might warrant a 5 for what you used and what you paid but overall the bizarre other races section and the pathetic psionics section bring it down.
Also, a general problem with it is that every other supplement was written without PO:S&P in mind, NPCs will end up being rather bland in comparison. Having PCs play with different rules is inherrently fine, but having all supplements not written with it in mind (except maybe Gates of Firerstorm Peak) is also something of a drawback. If you plan on just homebrewing your setting, or maybe just using a base campaign, having a number of house rules and using it as inspriation, it would be worth while to get.
