Savage Species (Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition) [Hardcover]

Savage Species is, as the notes say, the D&D 3e sourcebook on playing monster characters. Not necessarily hideously evil psychopaths (that's where Book of Vile Darkness comes in), but non-standard races...anything from the bugbear up to a stone giant.

Monster PCs have two things to concern themselves about...hit dice (i.e. how many hit dice they naturally start with) and level adjustment (having abilities that are worth a class level or two on their own). For example, our umber hulk friend has eight hit dice and a level adjustment of +6, for an ECL of 14...so an umber hulk is theoretically equivalent to a 14th-level Player's Handbook character.

So, the authors go through and list a chart of almost every existing monster in the game that has an ECL of 20 or below, along with official level adjustments for templates (lycanthrope, celestial, half-dragon, etc.) They also discuss letting a player start as a first-level monster, which must get to its base statistics before multiclassing...there's no using a minotaur's base stats at 1 HD, because they don't get them until they reach their final hit die. There's a 52-page appendix of sample monsters' ECL broken out into class levels, which is fairly nice.

You'll also find feats suited to monsters, new prestige classes, new gear, a lot of new templates (my favorite's Gelatinous...a semi-ooze creature), and new and/or reprinted creatures, including a long list of anthropomorphic races, such as dog-men and wolverine-people, the desmodu and loxo from MM2, and the half-ogre starting race. There are also rules for transforming characters between races and adding templates.

Something like this has been needed for a long time. Not only does it follow in the footsteps of AD&D2's Complete Book of Humanoids, but it answers rules questions that have popped up ever since the first PC got infected by lycanthropy. Some creatures will be less-playable than others, simply because their level adjustment is so high that they won't have the hit points to survive combat at their ECL. And there are a few questions, too...for dragons, do they require XP to gain hit dice, since they grow by aging? After all, 10 years can go by in a game fairly quickly, and that young dragon can become a juvenile and get stat and HD bonuses...

This is a great supplement, and I highly recommend it. It's probably most useful if you're going to start a new game, but it'll be useful for everybody at some point.

The book itself is well organized and has a little of everything and a lot of some things. For DMs who don't want to go through the work of interpolating an ECL 15 Mind Flayer into fifteen separate levels, each acquired at standard experience point intervals, or even *determine* the ECL for a Mind Flayer, you don't have to. Many monster races have entire monster class levels separated for you. For those that don't, there are guidelines both for determining level adjustments and breaking up effective levels into actual levels, i.e. "W00t, I'm now a level six Drider! I get spell resistance!"

There's a lot of stuff in this book. New spells (some good for non-monster PCs, too), new equipment (Including the Gloves of Man, so your paws/tentacles can grip those pesky crossbows or lock picks), new feats (Area Attack lets your colossal Mountain Giant smack a whole bunch of PCs when he swings a stone column), new prestige classes (Illithid Savant, for...well...eating brains for self-improvement), new templates (The illustration for the example Gelatinous Bear is great) and, of course, more.

A lot of people are highly interested in the artwork in Dungeons & Dragons books, and if that's what they want out of the book, they'll be disappointed. I personally don't need illustrations to accompany descriptions for how an Ogre Mage advances to ECL 12 because I already know what they look like. This book is almost devoid of reprinted material, but much of it is being presented in ways far and beyond what Monster Manual I (or II) ever planned. This small paradox makes a great number of illustrations unnecessary relative to most books with so much new material. Drawings of all the weird weapons and equipment are comparable to those in the Player's Guide and other books. It's really pretty irrelevant, though, because if you took the pictures out of the second half of the book it would still be wonderful, if rather drab.

One of the more reassuring touches is a tiny list at the beginning of the book that mentions a few changes from Monster Manual I that are/will also be in the revised Monster Manual I. No one wants a book that will be obsolete in just a few months.

Savage Species is a great book, and has almost everything you could possibly want in it. What it doesn't have, it offers guidelines for working out on your own. Dungeon Masters who spend fifteen hours planning sessions will be able to do anything they want, but if you just want to create an poor little orphaned fire elemental, you can do it as quickly as any other NPC. As a player's book, the pre-made monster classes will help provide some variety, even if the game is starting from level one. Pre-made=easier DM approval, too. Of course, *buying* your DM the book would help your case, but I would *never* condone such bribery...

Just...keep the fire elemental outta my bar, will ya?

The templates are what really make this book sing, along with a long appendix full of examples of monstrous classes that should empower any DM to turn a monster into a playable character.

This is, however, a book in serious need of one more working draft. The writers and editors took on a mighty task with this book, so I'm willing to forgive a lot, but references to incorrect pages, tables that don't exist and simple proofreading errors hamper the Savage Species experience. Also, there are numerous glaring examples of critters that bust wide open the abilities that a PC should be permitted at 1st level. This happens mostly with the advanced monsters, but many of them start with no attribute penalties, no serious drawbacks and numerous magical abilities. A little more scaling was needed for these, I think.

Still, now I can have that troll/barbarian I always dreamed of . . . and with more complete information that the "Complete" Book of Humanoids.

(edited in)

I've now read through the book cover to cover and, as a result, must downgrade my rating from 4 to 3 stars. The editing is more than just inconsistent, in parts its deeply confusing. Numerous feat and spell entries are extremely contradictory. For example, the spell "Earth Reaver" calls for no saving throw, but the last line of the spell description says that those who fail the saving throw will be made prone. I can guess what kind of saving throw is necessary, but, honestly, this is the sort of thing that should've been easy to spot in the editing process.

The excellence of the appendices, the prestige classes and the suggested rules are the saving graces of this book.