Wed Mar 16, 2005 12:50 pm  
Second glance d20 goodies

This thread came about from a looking at my bookshelf and going through the d20 rack at my FLGS (freindly local gaming store) and finding a few surprises that may have slipped by.

Tests of Skill
This one I got at Gen Con last year it comes from Skirmisher Games and is suprisingly good. I like the very mideval feel to the book and the layout is crisp and well done. I found it easy to place in Greyhawk and found it helped when combat was getting tiresome.
The 106 pg. softbound book features over a dozen encounters, two fleshed out scenarios and ways to link the encounters into a single nights game or into a mini campaign. A nice touch in that regard is detailing several towns, forts and urban areas as well as the Silurian Heights, a fully developed and mapped wilderness area. In Greyhawk this place would seem to sit will in either Ratik or Sterich.
Gamewise, the name says it all pitting PC's against adversaries, monsters and the elements in using skills and wits rather than throwing some stats of monsters set in a wilderness setting. While there is combat opprotunities in each scenario they have different ways to incorporate inventive skill use and diplomacy in leiu of straight up combat...for example, a quarry with a rich lode of nickel and marble is presented and will need someone with Profession (miner) to fully exploit the riches found while a hill giant, who isnt as loutish as many others wanders by and can be recruited to aid in the endevour or be fought straight away.
The encounters are well done with distances and conditions listed and fully stated NPC's and monsters, nice to see stats instead of a page reference. Owing to its name, the book also presents an expanded listing of uses based off the Craft and Profession skills, Feats that center around modifying class skills and abilities as well as setting background feats for NPC classes like warriors and commoners into Peasant Levy or Yeoman. The PrC section has three classes; the Gnoll Crocuta (a very appropriate class for gnolls of Yeenoghu, summoning ghouls and such), the Humbug ( a grifter with some magical talent) and the Mercenary Captain (a leadership based PrC that uses inspriration and brute force to make his troops more effective). It also has two monsters half-troll (already done by WotC) and the Dyre Hyenadon, and several NPCs including two statted NPC adventuring parties. In one of the few supplements this one has uses for books by letting PC's spend time reading them in game time and receiving a small XP award sand skill bonuses related to the books focus. For those with miniatures they have an adventure based on using Dwarven Forges Master Maze components.

The few criticisms I have is the art is a bit sparse in places and in the case of the Gnoll Crocuta detracts from the text completely.
Overall I liked this book and find it lends itself well to Greyhawk and can be either being mined for a few encounters or ideas or utilized as a starting point for a wilderness based game on the verge of civilization.

You can see more at www.skirmisher.com
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