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(More customer reviews)I previously reviewed Experts for the D20 Fantasy 3.0 system, so I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across the Skirmisher Game Development Group at a Role-Playing Game Association (RPGA) game of Living Greyhawk at Gen Con. It wasn't long before I walked away with several review copies of just about everything they've ever published.
Since I've already reviewed the book, I will only address what's new in Experts v3.5.
Upon opening the book, it's obvious that Experts has been redesigned with a new layout. There's plenty of margin space, perhaps too much. When they're not empty, the margins are filled with quotes from a variety of sources, all describing the particular expert in question. It's a nice touch.
The artwork is all clear black-and-white, with few color conversions. There's a lot of new clip art that's fantasy-oriented. And Sharon Daugherty's art, which were primarily pencil drawings and starkly out of character with the rest of the work, are much less in evidence.
A new core class is introduced titled the specialist. The purpose of the class is to provide a viable Player Character (PC) class for experts of various types, presumably as an alternative to the Non-Player Character (NPC) expert class. The differences are marginal: The specialist has a better Fortitude save and provides Bonus Feats or New Skills. The New Skill selection is a class skill, which provides the specialist with a total of 14 class skills (10 to choose from, just like the expert, and 4 from the class progression). The specialist also gets bonus feats like a fighter, only the feats are specifically for experts. All in all, "Specialists are to Experts what Fighters are to NPC Warriors." Still, Experts recommends that NPC classes (like an expert) have a Level Adjustment of -1, to make up for their weaker abilities. The specialist isn't a necessity to use the book, but it does provide a viable option for PCs who want an interesting background that's not as underpowered as NPC classes.
Much of the rest of the book focuses on expanding the expert class. While the DMG essentially covers the wide variety of experts by providing 10 class skills for them to choose from, Experts tweaks them further by categorizing the different types into metaclasses. There are craftsmen, entertainers, professionals, scholars, and tradesmen. Each is given the full class treatment, including typical adventurers of the class, characteristics of the class, suggested alignment, common religion, class background, races who are usually a member of the class, and how the class interacts with other classes. This is a vast improvement over the way Experts 3.0 dealt with classes, which was more the old Dungeons & Dragons 2.0 style of "kits." This book feels like it's really a 3.5 product.
Every walk of life is covered, from alchemist to armorer, blacksmith to barrister, cartographer to courtesan. In addition to the aforementioned descriptions, each expert includes starting packages and class abilities. For example, astronomers gain abilities like Peerless Temporal Sense, Cosmic Nerve, and Nighttime Adaptation, in addition to the expert class abilities. Some are more relevant and interesting than others. In my own campaign, the actor, courtesan, merchant, sailor, and slaver descriptions were most useful. Since I DM an Arcanis campaign, complete with Roman-style politics, the sidebar about slaves on page 85 was very useful.
A smattering of prestige classes is included in the first of nine (!) appendices. The book really only takes up 90 pages; the remaining 86 pages dedicated to the appendices. The prestige classes include the guildmaster, militia leader, and spellcrafter. They're all interesting, but seem to proscribe to the belief that there's a class for everything. Thus, militia leaders seem awfully powerful; at 10th-level, a militia leader can use his Final Defense ability for 10 rounds, during which time he gains a +2 bonus to AC, +2 bonus to saving throws, 5/- damage reduction, and +10 hit points. Damage reduction that rivals a 19th-level barbarian? I pity the fools who attack that village!
In the next appendix, various Craft, Knowledge, and Profession skills are detailed. This is as it should be; there's far too many new skills added to most D20 supplements that fails to take into account the fertile territory of making any of the skills a Craft, Knowledge, or Profession skill. Each is given the full treatment as well as how they interact with each other. Profession (Bartender) lists Difficulty Classes (DC) for doing everything from cleaning a glass to listening to a drunk to ejecting a half-orc. Halflings receive a +2 racial bonus to Profession (Bartender) and characters with the skill receive a +2 bonus to Appraise checks to determine the value of alcoholic drinks. This appendix also includes such goodies as magical properties of herbs, Smell and Taste skills to accompany Listen and Spot, and finally Read Magic Text for experts who want to use magical scrolls but not the Use Magic Device skill.
The third appendix has new feats, but they are all effectively just feats that provide bonuses to skills. The fourth appendix includes 14 pages of expert NPCs, certainly useful for a harried DM. The fifth appendix covers a small group of magical items that involve the aforementioned skills. The remaining appendixes cover creating a guild, cost of expert services, awarding experience points to experts for non-combat actions, and expert work areas.
The expert work areas appendix has an innovative approach, using three-dimensional snapshots of models from the Miniature Building Authority and Dwarven Forge. The problem is that the only way to do these photos justice is to print them in color. In black and white, the photos lose detail. They are certainly not a replacement for a clean black-and-white map. Nor are there five-foot grids to make them scannable/printable for miniature play.
Despite its flaws, Experts is a huge leap forward in expanding an oft-neglected expert class in D&D 3.5. It's well worth the money for harried DMs and players who really do want their PC to start out as a farmer or blacksmith.
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