Review of Librum Equitis Compiled

Warning: This is a d20 rules orientated product (i.e., crunchy). If you do not like d20, flee for your life now.

Do you like Prestige Classes? Do you really like Prestige Classes? How you answer that question will go a long way in determining if this product is for you or not.

Librum Equitis Compiled is a book of 50 (!) prestige classes from Ambient, sold through RPGNow. There's a little bit of other stuff, like a summary of rules for Blight Magic (from Mystic Eye Games' product, Blight Magic, apparently), and some new spells and cleric domains, but the whole point of this seems to be prestige classes. Like most prestige classes, most will be hit or miss when it comes to useability in your campaign. To my eye, most looked fairly well done, but I think the main use would be for NPCs, particularly in creating special opponents for the PCs or villains. And as the name implies, this is apparently a compilation of classes from other sources. Mostly the previous two books in this series, but I also see a couple from Mystic Warriors.

Anyway, it's a 117 page PDF. I don't know what it costs exactly, somewhere between $8 and $10. (For some reason, I got a free copy of this. I got an email from RPG Now saying "You have received a complimentry copy of a product". I didn't even know what it was until I opened it up in Adobe Reader). This is probably not the sort of product I would buy, since I am not really a prestige class fan. (I'm more a core class kind of guy. Those and brunettes.)).

That said, I do find this product useful. While I am sure I won't be using most of the classes in here, many of them would make really good villains. For instance, the "Bokor", which is essentially an evil voodoo practicioner. That would work in D&D, but also in various d20 horror games like Deadlands or Weird Wars or even Spycraft (Live and Let Die had James Bond go up against a voodoo practicioner). There are a number of similar, icky sort of necromancer style prestige classes.

The ickiest is probably the "Mad Tailor". They're sort of like Dr. Frankenstein, but worse. They're more like the doctor from "The Brain that Wouldn't Die", or Bart's evil (well, good) twin from the Treehouse of Horrors in that they make weird creatures out of other creatures by sewing them together. The "Corpulant" seems something out of a video game I'm playing right now (Grandia 2), it's a prestige class for a cleric of gluttony, it gets fatter and fatter as it grows more powerful (Also like Oprah, I guess). I could go on, there's a lot of them. Maybe 20 of these villainous style classes.

Some classes are named somewhat, well, oddly. The "Chosen Warlord" for instance. The "Dirty Monk" for another (especially these days. There's a retreat near me that the Catholic Church sends their "Dirty Monks", at least according to my states registered sex offenders list). These might be great classes, but their silly names kept me from taking them seriously.

Many classes are for specific roles in an army. The "Longbowman", the "Elite Cavalry", the "Military Archer", "Imperial Crossbowman", etc. If nothing else, I guess they could be useful for making military NPCs.

There are some prestige classes in this that seem aimed at PCs. The "Bounty Hunter", for instance, though I probably prefer the "Hunter" core class from AEG's Mercenaries, or the "Stalker" core class from Sovereign Stone. The "Sacred Paladin" has a somewhat redundant (and dorky) name, but it is essentially a prestige paladin variant. Some people prefer that to the core Paladin. The "Swashbuckler" is also interesting. There are maybe 10 classes suitable for most PCs (though obviously it depends on your PCs, some might fit in the above categories).

So, to sum up, if you are looking for a book of prestige classes, this is a pretty good product. I can't really say how it compares to Mongoose's Ultimate Prestige Class book, as I don't own it. It's also a pretty good product to buy if you are looking for ideas for villains. Is it worth buying if you don't like prestige classes? Probably not.

Still, my only real complaints are some of the classes don't seem all that useful, most notably the military ones (Is anyone ever really going to play a "Phalanx"?), and I have trouble with some of the names of the classes (the name of the product is also a pain to spell, but I don't count that). B . Probably more if you love prestige classes, much less if you don't.