Review of Dragonstar Player's Companion
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Basically, this book is extra "crunchy" stuff, it's not really a "Player's Companion". The Starfarer's Handbook was the equivalent of the Player's Handbook. This is just a splatbook, mostly a grab bag of stuff - prestige classes, feats, spells, and some spellware, some aimed at players, some not. It is aimed at characters though, be they Player or Non-Player, and is mostly rules.
The first impressions aren't good. Much of the interior art is, well, awful. Lots of pictures where the person is very very tall in relation to their width. I guess that's some sort of style (I've seen it in another book), but it's a really horrible looking style. They look like anorexic basketball players. This isn't the WNBA. Many also have dead looking eyes, as if they are manequins, or mishapen bodies - in once case, there seems to be a woman with 3 breasts. (The art's not all bad - the ones by James Ryman are excellent, as are some by an artist who didn't sign their work, and it's a shame they didn't have more pictures)
The layout is generally pretty poor. There are only 4 chapters, with fairly broad subjects, things are lumped together. New sections sometimes start at the very bottom of a page, which can be confusing (I almost missed the Legendary Class section, because of this, on my first browse through)
The first half of the book is prestige classes. Not surprisingly, as they take up half the book, there are a lot of them (15). Many of these are actually done the way prestige classes should be (I think), they are all organizations that characters have to join.
For instance, the Adamantine Infiltrator. This is an agent in the secret service of the evil dragons. There are a couple other groups that serve other dragons.
One organization, Wraith Squadron, which works for the good dragons (usually) seems like a complete ripoff of er, Wraith Squadron from Star Wars. Both are "good" mercenary fighter spacecraft units. I know that Dragonstar is loosely like Star Wars, but I can't believe there was something this blatant. What's next? Ewoks?
Also interesting is the Celestial Guard. They're a LG order that rages like a barbarian, kind of (Holy Zeal, the ability is called. It's not exactly like rage, but close to it). Other notables includes the Dark Zone Explorer (though details about what the zone is like are still quite sketchy), the Royal Marshal (sort of a bounty hunter)
It's odd in that there is one psionic prestige class in this chapter. There are also several more in the psionics chapter. Odd putting them in two different places.
There are some more generic prestige classes, too, like the "Combat Ace", "Dragon Slayer" or "Ecoterrorist".
Speaking of which, I also have a strong objection on how the Ecoterrorist class is mostly for characters with good alignments - either CG, NG, or CN. This is moral relativism at it's worst. It's not just okay, but "Good" to deliberately murder innocent people as long as the beneficiary is a planet, an inanimate object. I don't think so...(though of course, I tend to take the same view C.M. Burns does about Mother Nature...)
The only prestige class I really had problems with, game mechanically, was the "Info-Warrior". It's highest power apparently lets the Info Warrior to insert their soul into a computer system, and so hack any computer, to it's core, completely and thoroughly, automatically. They can control everything hooked to it, they can get any data in the system, encrypted or not.
There are also several (5) Legendary Classes. Legendary Classes are basically super-prestige classes, only with higher requirements, only 5 levels of advancement, and a bit more customizable for the player than the usual prestige class. They get things like "Ability I", "Ability "II", up to V (at 5th level, naturally enough), which you pick from a list (kind of like some Rogue abilities work). The Roman Numeral is the power level, the higher, the more powerful it is. So the player has to decide, do I take this power immediately, but have it at a lower level, or wait until later, and have it more powerful.
Some are a bit unlikely to be used by PCs. The Galactic Conquerer, for instance. One of the requirements is they must conquer an entire world, personally (not singled handedly, but has to get his hands dirty, doing some of the fighting. But would take a heck of a lot of time given the fairly detailed nature of D&D/d20s combat system). But then there are things like the "Rebel", "Faithful Servant", "Master Roboticist", which are perhaps more useful, if also rather drably named. There's also the "Machine Man", which seems to be a homage to Asimov's "Bicentennial Man".
Then comes a chapter on feats and "Schools". The first part is self-explanatory if you know anything about d20/D&D 3E, but Schools are new, apparently from the book Swashbuckling Adventures.
Basically, they are a way in which a character spends experience points to earn new abilities. There are ten different levels of abilities to learn in each school. 22,000 XP or so to fully max out a school. That's a lot of xp. If a character wants to learn something from another school, the cost is doubled.
Personally, I don't like these things, because I think it sidesteps the whole purpose of having a level system. In effect, it makes characters more powerful than their level would otherwise indicate. The main reason levels exist is as a way to gauge how powerful a character is, and thus allow the GM to easily tailor adventures for them. By going outside the level system, it both hurts and helps the players. While they have more powers, and thus are theoretically tougher than characters that same level, the GM will be encouraged to throw tougher opponents against them. But not having higher levels, just powers, they will lack higher hit points, saves, and attack bonuses. (They'll also lag about 1 or 2 levels behind their fellow PCs).
The whole concept of schools are pretty much exactly what prestige classes were meant for.
As to the new feats, well, there are 28 of them. Many are Dragonstar background related, but there are some general ones. "Touch to Ray" is a metamagic feat that lets any touch spell be instead cast as a ray spell (but counts as a spell 2 levels higher). Could be fairly useful for a cleric, as they tend to have more touch spells. Also, "Skill Adept", which might be a bit too much - it's like Skill Focus (gives a +3 bonus to a skill), only it stacks on top of Skill Focus. Also "Dead Eye", which lets the user add their dexterity bonus to damage done with missile weapons.
The next section is on spells and spellware (spellware is implanted magic items, in practice, like cybernetics).
There are 50 or so new spells (15 pages worth). Two new domains are introduced, "Dragon" and "Technology", and some of the spells are unique to them. For instance, one of the Technology domain spells lets the caster turn into a cyborg (temporarily). None of the spells really did much for me, but nothing made me think "Boy, this is dumb".
There is 6-7 pages of new spellware. Some seem a bit too powerful. Dragonbreath, lets you breath an element like a dragon, and in some cases, it's a lot of damage. Another gives you magic wings that work even in a vacuum, but don't have any drawbacks, like having to put holes in the back of your shirts. Also a large section on Golem arms.
Lastly, there is a section on Psionics. Psionics were added to the d20 SRD after (or around the time) Dragonstar was released. So they couldn't be added to the original two books.
Much like the Starfarer's handbook discusses changes to the core classes, this discusses the changes to the existing psionic core classes.
Also introduced is a new core class, the "Bio-Psion" (Likely soon to be called "Bison" by my players). Unfortunately, it uses non-standard base attack bonuses and save progressions. While I guess there's nothing technically wrong with that, I think it's a bit sloppy, and there are legitimate balance issues when multi-classing is used.
Secondly, the power point progression is very very screwy (Psionics use a power point system). They start with 5, stay there for a while, then increase by only 2 a level. By contrast, the original psionic core classes have a geometric progression. This also has a geometric progression, but as an extra, you have to spend extra xp and money on them.
I can see how the way it works adds a lot of flavor, but it seems like too much of a hassle for the return.
A new, "Psionic" race is also introduced. The "Tsalokhi". They're basically edgier humans. They like body piercing, shaved heads/mohawks, tattoos, extreme sports (presumably), and are generally "kewler" than human. (at least if you're a 12 year old, I guess). Though going by the illustration, they don't have legs and are about 10 feet tall. As you might be able to tell, I wasn't too impressed with them.
There are 3 psionic pretige classes. The "Net Walker", someone adept at computer hacking psionically, the "Cyberkineticist", which are voyeurs using a combination of psionics and cybernetics, and the "Ascetic of the Noetic Order", sort of like a psionic monk (not a martial arts monk, more like a zen monk).
There's a very minimal table of contents (just lists the 4 chapters. Big help). And there is an index, which is nice, though it's not long. In fact, it's pretty much what a good table of contents would cover - mostly covering the major items.
So, to sum up, the prestige classes are okay, the new spells and spellware okay, the psionics section, well, isn't great, but is useable. Despite the name of the book, I'm not sure it's even aimed at players, as many of the prestige classes aren't overly suitable for PCs, more for NPCs/villains. All in all, an okay book. Not great, not terrible (except some of the artwork), just average. C-
I personally found this book a bit disappointing. The only thing I actually liked are some of the prestige classes, more specifically, the organizational write ups relating to them. I was hoping there would be more info for players on how to role-play in the Dragonstar setting, not just crunchy bits. Sort of like the Player's Companion for Fading Suns. While I like Dragonstar a lot (I have all the books except the newest adventure from Mystic Eye, and I plan on getting that soon), I've thought the amount of info on the setting itself is rather sparse. Which makes it hard to run.
So if you're looking for lots of rules related material for Dragonstar characters, you should like this better than I did.
