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That was my first thought when my friend delivered an eagerly awaited copy of Witch Hunter: The Invisible World into my hands. I had just finished my third slot of playing WH:TIW's associated "living" campaign, Dark Providence, and I was seriously jonesing for my own copy - too bad they had all sold out within minutes of receiving shipments.
The thing's thick, almost heavy enough to smite a witch with. Two hundred seventy-four pages of evil-roasting goodness, and built like a Caterpillar dozer. Since my fourth slot was coming up, the first thing I looked for was the index to research my background (and more on that in a second).
Where was that index? No index!
Thus ensued a whole lot of manic page-flipping to attempt to tone my fastplay character up for fourth slot. It didn't happen.
What I saw in that initial flurry was terrific, however. I briefly read how Cortez, instead of subjugating Montezuma and the entire Aztec nation, got a whole lot of molten gold poured down his throat. Cool. Characters start with four talents (feat analogues) and character creation ensures you'll have at least one statistic that you're superior with. Even fresh characters are pretty hoss.
What I also noticed, almost immediately, is that this is a book that sorely needed polish. There are quite a few typographical and layout errors. The art is great and vividly evokes the setting for the first 100 pages, but after the player information, the quantity drops off considerably. There's lots of adjective and exclamatory dross, particularly in the GMing portion, that could have been trimmed to make room for that dad-blasted index that I so badly wanted.
The Fluffy
You'll have no problem coming up with a rich and compelling session for your players - vast tracts of this book are devoted to describing the conditions of the alternative 1689 in which the veil between worlds is flawed and the Adversary (a catch-all term for Satan, Baalzebul, Antichrist, Lucifer, Old Wicked) actively pursues the damnation of souls through fallen angels, werewolves, native spirits and twisted fae. Think Van Helsing, or especially Brotherhood of the Wolf.
It should be noted that Witch Hunter is not for the faint of heart. Bad Things happened in 1689 - prostitution, slavery, racism, sacrificial rituals, shocking abuses of power - and the book handles these in a very frank manner. Yes, if you want to buy a whore for an evening, there is rules support for that. If a villain wants to gain power by killing a peasant girl and eating her flesh, well, there's rules support for that too.
The basic story is that in the early ages of man, these forces freely walked the earth, but Solomon enacted a Great Seal - though flawed - that set up a partial barrier between the supernatural and the mundane. Because he detected the flaw in the process, he allowed some of the magic in the rite to escape into the world to be wielded by man in order that some few might use it to combat the forces that cross the veil. Many choose to use that power for evil. A few - the Witch Hunters - use it to send evil spirits summoned to walk among man back to Hell.
Witch Hunters can originate from among any man, not just the white and Christian, and the excellent middle of the book does a pretty dang good job of describing various origin countries and their current sociological and political statuses. Wanna be from Portugal? You've got two full pages of text to tell you what your character's home nation is like. Backgrounders are included for all major political forces in Europe, and information on Catholicism, Judaism, major monastic orders and almost all major Protestant sects and splinter groups is available. If your character originates from a country that was a major Christian sea power or from the colonized New World, you are exhaustively covered.
It is somewhat light on information on the New World native religions; Islam, though mentioned occasionally in context of being a player religion, has virtually no background info. And with the exceptions of Italy and Holland, if you want your character to originate from east of France, get ready to do some Web digging or break out the history books. It's rather puzzling that sections are devoted to Brazil and the Aztec Empire, but not to the H.R.E. or Scandinavia.
The more unique information to Witch Hunter is well-conceived. Players pick one of nine different Orders of Witch Hunters to join, each of which receive close to two pages of information. Each one grants a unique crunch benefit to the player - Stalwarts can protect other players, Apostles can speak more languages (which is actually quite important in this setting) and can attempt some magic untrained.
A good deal of time is also spent describing the magic system as well as various relics which can serve a role similar to spellbooks, and each of the three branches available to players - animism (think shaman), hermeticism (think wizard) and prayer (think cleric) - feel distinct and powerful in their own right.
One of the most compelling portions of Witch Hunter, the mechanic that truly ties the setting to the mechanics, is True Faith and Damnation. Villains fuel their abilities through Damnation, whereas some of the most powerful abilities and resistances of heroes are fueled by True Faith. Not unlike real life, it's a lot easier to get Damnation than True Faith - all you have to do to pick up a point of Damnation is succumb to your Vice, picked at character creation along with a Virtue. In exchange for sending your soul that little bit further to Hell (pick up 10 and you become a NPC!), you get a supernatural supercharge of ability to get yourself out of a jam. The only way to get rid of Damnation is to act according to your Virtue - and do it in such a way as to put your character or the party's progress at risk.
The Crunchy
Witch Hunter, at the core, is a cinematic system, somewhat like White Wolf products and exactly like Random Anime. Players are encouraged via a "Hero Point" (~Action Points) mechanism to describe what they do. In short, "I leap onto the table to swing off the chandelier and then somersault before I tackle the pirate" is the same in this system as "I move to attack."
The core mechanic, which is proprietary to Paradigm, is based solely on the d10. Leave all the other dice in the bag, and go scoop a cup of d10s up at your next con; you'll need them. Paradigm wants you to roll a ton of dice, yet because they're based on a success system - sevens and up indicate a success - you can very quickly interpret how well you did. As usual, fistfuls of dice are fun.
There are two kinds of rolls - opposed and standalone. Standalone rolls are based against a flat difficulty, such as a minimum of successes needed to cast a spell. Typically, the more successes you have over the minimum, the more powerful or longer-lasting the effect becomes. Opposed rolls are simply a comparison between the successes of two different skills, such as rolling Subterfuge against someone's Notice to pick their pocket. Advancement is performed via the awarding of skill points at the end of each session, and every aspect of the character, from core stats to skills to talents, can be upgraded.
It's a very easy system to pick up - even without the book, myself and several others were able to play with few problems in the initial session, and things only got smoother from there. In combat, players can pick between a host of combat manuevers, none of which require feats, that improve defense, cause more damage, break or disarm an opponent's weapon or knock them down.
Speaking of combat, it's a fast-paced and simple affair. Each villain has a set defense number, whereas the players at the beginning of a round roll a "defense pool" to determine how much defense they have for the round. Successes go against the defense pool/number, and after the pool is exhausted, weapons begin doing one point of damage per excess success and then extra damage dependent on the weapon. Harder-hitting weapons have higher "damage modifiers", but generally allow the player to roll less dice. There are three tiers of enemies - minions, lieutenants and villains - and minions are handled in such a way that the players can face a hundred of them without undue strain on the GM. Villains, on the other hand, are fully-fleshed characters with horrific abilities.
In regards to character creation, generally, the benefits from the Orders feel fairly well-balanced with one another. On top of the Orders, though, players can pick from among twenty Backgrounds - including the prototypical warrior (soldier) to the straight-up strange (prostitute! nanny!) The backgrounds determine how many skill ranks can be slotted the five different skill categories at creation, establish "background" skills which have a free rank and cheaper for the player to gain ranks in after the player begins adventuring, and grants a unique power (such as the Guard's ability to parry attacks against other players within arm's reach.) Here again, the balance between these seems fairly strong - even though many of them are analogous to "face" and "sage" classes, there are defined benefits in the system that make Charisma-like abilities feel less limp.
There are nine abilities; three physical, three mental and three charismatic. There can be dire consequences for "dumping" any given stat - many villains are balanced out by weaknesses, and it takes mental abilities to determine what those weaknesses are. Several charismatic stats are required for resisting supernatural effects of those tainted by the Adversary, and the consequences for failing these rolls can be quite severe. In play sessions, there was a strong investigation component, and because of the strength of the setting and system, it did not seem to bog down nearly as badly as many d20 "investigative adventures" seem to do.
There are imbalances, though. Agility, for example, controls part of your defense, all stealth skills, all ranged attack skills and even small melee weapons, which puts it somewhat out of line with other stats that may control only one or two skills (such as Courage). Particularly with some of the mental and charismatic statistics, there seems to be a paucity of skills linked to them, and the skills themselves can seem a little too specific.
Regarding talents, there are several curiosities: One talent, for example, gives an extra die to a single skill only in very specific situations, whereas another talent gives an extra die to any skill of your choice in all situations - and it costs twice what the former does! There are three tiers of these talents - basic, greater, and heroic. Heroic skills costs 4x the amount of skill points necessary to purchase a basic talent, and frankly, very few of them seem worth the cost. Many of the basic talents are excellent, whereas quite a few of the greater and heroic seem somewhat limp, especially considering their cost.
Finally regarding talents, players must purchase or be created with a minimum of two talents to cast a single spell, with each spell costing an additional talent. Similarly, there are several historically based fighting styles, which have their own talents and have to have a prerequisite talent spent in acquiring the style before any of the benefits can be purchased (though a fighting style is not required to be effective in combat.) Similar to the generic talents, the higher level talents for magic and styles do not feel nearly as worth the cost as simply buying more basic talents.
Overall, I would recommend that DMs considering running Witch Hunter play a very close advisory role in letting players know what they can expect in a given campaign so that players distribute skills accordingly, and given the issues with some of the talents, some house adjustments and perhaps additions are probably needed.
Organized Play
This review wouldn't be complete without mentioning Paradigm's organized play support for Witch Hunter. Paradigm currently conducts a "living" campaign through their d20 Arcanis setting, and from the beginning, they are supporting a "living" campaign for their latest product. The campaign, called Dark Providence, is primarily set in the New World.
Even though the game is just now arriving in some stores, there are already seven adventures available for play, each with an adventure record to track your character's progress. Later in 2007, a convention called "Wicked Harvest" will be run in several different locations featuring three new adventures and, in some places, an interactive adventure. Right now, one of the adventures is available for download from Paradigm's Dark Providence Web site (www.darkprovidence.net) and more of the adventures will be available for download in the short-term future.
With forty tables run at DP's latest stop, Dragon*Con, Dark Providence is off to a strong showing thanks in no small part to Paradigm's success with Living Arcanis, which has provided a built-in fanbase for the launch.
Summing Up
There's definitely problems. Talents and skills, in particular, show weaknesses in balance. This is be partially forgiven, though, due to the fact that Paradigm simply doesn't have the resources to conduct wide-scale playtesting and that this is an entirely new (if heavily borrowed) mechanics system. These things, though, can be resolved by GM adjustment and a little creativity. What can't be so easily replaced is the almost obsessive detail placed into creating the setting and weaving a rich tapestry in which to place the players.
In the end, Witch Hunter is about cinematics, not mechanics, and the vivid detail available in which to craft characters serves this core mission well. And burning witches is just cool. With a fascinating setting and strong out-of-the-gate organized play support Witch Hunter is sturdy enough to deserve that $40 retail tag.
