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The book itself is hardcover, full-color and 318 pages. The cover looks like the novels, a wraparound picture from the front to the back and the title and authorship looks a lot like the style of the novels. It looks good.
Basics: This is d20 book through and through. The authors have used the basic d20 rules but have added a lot of new abilities and ways of looking at the rules. I'll give some examples below but I like a lot of what they have done.
The races: Pick em. You can choose a human or an Ogier. Or for a bit of varity, an Ogier or a human. Of course as the world is basically human dominated in the books it is no real suprise, but I thought they could have thrown in rules for a couple other really nonstandard races, like perhaps the Trollocs at least.
Of course if you do choose humans you have to make another choice. You have to choose where he/she is from. And this is interesting. When you choose a region you get a list of 3-4 feats and 3-4 skills. You get one of these feats as a bonus feat and one of these skills as a bonus skill at rank 4. [In other words, the same as a standard human, but less choice] But the big advantage is that you get all the skills from your home region as class skills no matter what class you choose. This is a really good way to give your character concept some badly needed skills that otherwise you could not get. I liked this part of the system a lot. One question; where did the Seanchen go? They are not listed as an available region.
An Ogier is an Ogier. He gets some knowledge skills as a bonus and can do a few special things but overall they are far more limited than a human. For example, they cannot do magic.
The genders: Pick em. You can choose a man or an woman. Or for the sake of varity, a female or a male. Unlike most other worlds, the choice you make does matter, at least if you want to be a magic user. Otherwise it just affects the amount of armor and clothing you can wear. The bigger bosom, the less armor and clothing. [Just kidding]
Hero Templates: Looks a lot like deadlands. You choose what kind of guy you wantto play and get a quick set of attrubutes, skills, feats and equipment. There aree a lot of them(20 ) so you can get a good choice. None of the templates are amazing, but they sure are quick andeasy.
The classes: None of the standard classes exist here, or are supposed to[according to the book] Here is a short list of the classes and a thumbnail description.
Algai'd'siswai: [Say that real quick five times. I dare you] The aiel spearman/woman, he/she is really good at quickness, gaining a good defense Bonus(see below) and great initiative bonuses
Armsman: Your basic fighter, he differs in ony a few ways. He is a good entry character into the prestige clases Blademaster and Warder.
Initiate: A trained magic user, but does not have to memorize spells in advance (noone does) They get lost of bonus feats but they need them, see the magic section below.
Noble: A hybrid class with decent fighting and diplomacy abilities. A natural party leader, this guy can give scary bonuses when the party works together on a task. Not too impressive in combat though. A better NPC?
Wanderer: Basically a rogue he is a bit weaker on backstabbing and sneaky stuff but better at using his skills.
Wilder: The other spellcaster. Generally weaker than the initiate, and certainly far more limited in spells, they all start blocked and so at low levels have lots of trouble casting spells at all. They can get rid of the block at 3rd level or so but until then it is a real pain in the ass.
Defense Bonus: This is an ability all the classes have where they get this bonus or hteir armor bonus, whichever is higher. Really nice especially as it starts out at 2, 3 or 4 for every class. (Can you say no more leather armor evermore?) (Or light armor for that matter in many cases) This virtually eliminates the concept of armor for most characters as there is really no need unless htey wear really heavy armor and move slower. The defense bonus goes up with level, though really slowly except for Algai'd'siswai. Everyone else will likely want to wear magical armor at some point. Armsmen can add their armor bonus to their defence bonus which is quite nice. One note: There is no arcane failure chance for armor, so armor up your initiate and wilders to the teeth.
The skills: There is really little new here except for three new skills for channelers (magic users) Composure lets the character attain desired mental states(for blocks and dreamwalkers mainly) Invert lets you hide your magic from other users. Weavesight lets you see what others are trying to do to you.
The feats: Most of these are from the player's handbook but some are from other sources like Forgotten realms, the class books and who knows where else. A nice selection, though. They have some very useful feats for channelers and the 'lost' feats that duplicate some of the rare abilities such as Dreamwalking, Viewing(Min), sniffing and the Old Blood. Interesting but costly as each of these requires two feats.
Weapons, armor and equipment: Nothing too suprising here except for some Seanchen items. Odd when they are not listed in the regional area for character creation.
Combat: Nothing all that new here.(And I really just skimmed this part)(a quick skim)
The One Power: Here is where it gets odd and interesting. All spells are divide into the five affinities(Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Spirit) Men start with one element(Spirit, Fire, Earth) while women also start with one element(Spirit, Air, Water) To get more elements, you need to spend feats(Eventually you can get all five). You also need to spend feats to buy talents. Every spell belongs to one or more talents, some common and some rare. Also some talents have many spells in it(elementalism), and some talents have a single spell(balefire). So spellcasters really need to spend feats like water to have any good selection of spells.[I really hope that wizards has a list of player's handbook spell conversions to this system to increase variety. There are not many spells in this book] This is what really hurts wilders.
One other good point is that many spells can be cast at varying levels, anywhere from a choice of two levels to a choice of all nine in some cases. This variety is really good, as the caster can choose how much power to spend, especially when overchanneling
Now where wilders shine is in what they call overchanneling. This is when a spellcaster has used up all their slots for the day they can keep casting spells. It is risky, but not too bad, if the caster sticks to easy spells. They need to make a concentration check and a fortitude save if they fail the concentration check. If they do so there is atable for what happens to them. The lowest results ae not bad but you do not want to fail your fortitude save by more than 10 points or you cannot channel for a whole day. If you fail by 25 or more you are stilled and probably never cast a spell again. Of course this means with a great concentration skill total(15 ) a caster can cast spells until the end of time. This is something that might have to be watched by the DM.. Another limitation is thatthe overchanneling must be in your affinity.
Prestige classes: Again the name and a short description
Aes Sedai: If you want to be really good, take this class. Lots of spellcasting bonuses, these women could be really scary.
Asha'man: Basically male Aes Sedai, they have better casting abilites in combat but are a bit less versitile than Aes Sedai. Very, very little less. A powerful prestige class. The only problem is the MADNESS. Very dangerous.
Blademaster: Very similar tothe Kensai prestige classin Oriental adventures, it is a good way to do lots of damage with a weapon. Lots and lots of damage.
Commander: A lot of really good abilities for leading groups of men on the battlefield it is also good for parties of adventurers. One question; why is the leadership feat not required?
Gleeman: A fun prestige class where you gain some bard-like abilites with song. They also get the legend lore ability.
Theif-Taker: A bodyguard/theif hunter who uses theif-like tactics, he is a good all around class for someone who wants to play a fighting oriented rogue.
Warder: An Aes Sedai's warrior companion. A good fighter he can do a lot of damage with his weapon. He also has the defense bonus plus armor bonus of an armsman.
Windfinder: Good for a shipbound campaign, but really limited anywhere else. Really not that great for ships either, unfortunately.
Wise Ones: They can all dreamwalk, opening upthe world of dreams to the party. She is not all that great with spells, nothing like an Aes Sedai.
Wolfbrother. Remember Perrin? Be Perrin II. An interesting prestige class with a lot of interesting character abilities.
The monsters: Not too many of them, they all fit the storyline and the novels well.The gholam is particurally nasty. Importing monsters with care will be necessary to avoid boredom in a hack and slash type adventure, but then again, The Wheel of Time is primarily human versus human anyway.
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The good: Overall the book is well done and looks quite playable. the cover is quite unique which will help with my growing collection of books as it is the only one I can easily pick out from across the room. There are some great ideas that could fit into standard 3rd ed, such as the defence bonus, and the idea of variable level spells, especially for sorcerers(giving them a big power boost) though they are good with metamagic feats too, letting you enhance a spell while taking slightly lower effect. It sounds counterproductive, I know, but it would work well.
The bad: If you have not readthe books, this system will do little for you. Also, there are a few questions with requirements for prestige classes and some of the wilder feats. I would have liked to have seen more than two races, and seee nthe Seanchen in the book much more. and although the book is supposedly 'Web Enhanced' it is really 'Later to be 'Web Enhanced'' as there is nothing up yet.
Recommendation: If you loived the World of Time books, go out and buy it. If you want something to fit into an existing campaign, buy something else. The classes are a bit more powerful than standard, in my opinion, and that would cause problems.
Hope you enjoyed the read.
Douglas W. Moore
