Comic Book Superhero Store - Savage Species: Playing Monstrous Characters (Dungeons & Dragons Supplement)

--it is a partial rehashing of 2E's *Complete Book of Humanoids* (which is less serious than the following, since 3E is basically just a rehashing of 2E in general),

--its unfortunate partial obsolescence (3.5E does indeed provide LA for each "playable" creature in the most recent *MM*--though *Savage Species* will ultimately consider all creatures to be "playable," whereas *MM* clearly does not), and

--the sad fact that WotC invests what must be approaching $0 in copyediting.

Those reservations noted, it must be said that the text opens up in 3E a new vista; instead of relying on the vanilla races of the *PH*, one can now, say, run a party of harpy infiltrators, a band of trollish barbarians, a medusa rogue, or (gods forbid it) a hive of illithids, demons, or some other uberpowerful beasties as PCs. (Though the *DMG* hints at such a vista, its suggestions proved to be unwieldy, incomplete, and generally confusing to most of us gamer-geeks.)

The text has many virtues in this regard:

1) new feats, spells, items, and prestige classes for monstrous folk, all generally well conceived.

2) some fair-to-middling notes on how to run a campiagn centered on the misadventures and cross accidents inevitably encountered by a group of bugbear PCs, for instance.

3) loads of bombass templates (these really are worthy of attention).

4) the reconceptualization of the game system entirely in terms of class--now, everything is a matter of class--no more monster advancing by the nebulous Hit Die (but this still doesn't resolve the bizarre aspect that Hit Die never correlated with CR; recall that level in a PC class always correlates with CR--why the inconsistency?).

5) tons and tons of statistical tables (the true value of the text). These also come with a set of guidelines to produce similar "class template" tables for any monster in the system--a very high degree of diversity for any game, which is surely a plus.

6) the introduction of both the "half-ogre" and "anthropomorphic animal" standard PC races (very good additions to the rules).

7) some very fine artwork

In these respects, there is value here, but unfortunately the aforementioned problems will limit its appeal and utility.