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The Book Itself
True20 Adept's Handbook is a 96 page paperback printed in black and white. A quick flip through shows much of every page devoted to text explaining how the game works, interspersed with B&W art.
The print is a shade on the small side, but that allows for that much more information to be presented.
Chapter Breakdown
Chapter One: Adept Creation
The chapter begins with a number of possible sample backgrounds to help develop Adept characters, a dozen new Core Abilities for use with Adepts as well as three new modified Adept Role variants: Scholar, Superhero and Templar. The addition of the Superhero Role seems very forced to me as True20 isn’t particularly well set up to deal with power levels required to run a really flexible supers game.
The remainder of the chapter is dedicated to explaining different possible “Supernatural Philosophies,” a.k.a. what flavor of magic/powers you might want your Adept to use. Nearly 30 Philosophies presented allow for quite a bit of customization for your particular campaign, giving different Adepts a slightly different bent if necessary.
Chapter Two: Supernatural Skills
The Skills presented are few (three are covered) but well gone over, and are really only applicable to a particular subset of Adepts – those that might make use of prophecies.
Chapter Three: Supernatural Feats
The Feats presented are numerous (over three dozen) and all Adept specific, making this chapter less useful for other Roles. Only about half of the Feats are designed for combat, making them attractive for characters to shine in other areas.
Chapter Four: New Supernatural Powers
This chapter seems to have taken a page from the Expert’s Handbook with its selection of new Feats – over 100 new Powers are presented for use. Much like the previous chapter, there is a good mix of combat and non-combat Powers.
The end of the chapter also has a section describing “Advanced Powers,” which goes into alternate uses for the Powers presented in the core book, which again provides the Adept with more versatility.
The chapter wraps up with a brief bit about how to work “Psychic Grappling,” where two characters vie for mental control.
Chapter Five: Supernatural Items
Creation and use of single use, multiple use and permanent magical items is covered in some depth in this chapter, giving options for both player and GM alike as to how they might want to have imbued items work in a given campaign.
Chapter Six: Optional Rules
As with the Expert’s Handbook, I am once again somewhat puzzled that “Optional Rules” would be a separate chapter when the entirety of the book is pretty much “optional rules,” but here are found some ideas and mechanics that didn’t seem closely related enough to anything previously discussed. It starts with a method of providing for ritual magic and what sorts of things can factor into said rituals.
”Supernatural Places of Power” and “Summoning” are covered next, with each being touched on enough to provide information for both player and GM alike.
This is followed by “Runecasting,” which I found to be very reminiscent of the Diabolism from Palladium Fantasy RPG, particularly with the inclusion of “actual” runes to be used. I’ve always liked it when games go to the trouble of providing the art/glyphs associated with this sort of magic, and “Runecasting” covers nearly three dozen distinct runes.
Overall
This book is an outstanding resource for both players and GMs alike, providing a wealth of information as to how to run particular types of magic/flavors of powers for a given game. Unlike the Expert’s Handbook, which had Feats and uses for Skills for Roles other than just the Expert class, the book is solely intended for Adept Role characters - so should your game/campaign not be as focused on that it might not provide you with as much use as you would otherwise like. As with the True20 core rules, not everything presented is designed or intended to work together, so some care is needed when introducing this to an ongoing campaign or when taken into consideration for a new campaign.
I don’t know if I would use even half of what is presented in the book as the better part of it doesn’t seem to be up my alley, but having the option is always welcome.
Style: 4
Substance: 4.5
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