The Dragonstar Player's Companion is a 128 page softcover
book, priced at $20. The cover features the same trio of people
as the cover of Imperial Supply did, in somewhat more relaxed
poses.
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.
Review Summary