The Complete Book of Humanoids

Review


Title: The Complete Book of Humanoids
Company: TSR
Category: RPG Supplement
Reviewer: Mike Lampman

Most of the books in TSR's 'complete book' series are laid out in a similar manner, so just go get one of the ones you have, and pretend you have the Humanoid book as I take us through it. Now, the first thing we notice about the book is the brown cover with gold colored lettering. Snazzy, huh? But, rather than stare at the cover all day, we'll open it up and take a look inside. Be careful of paper cuts though. Opening it to page 2, we find the table of contents.

We see that the book is broken up into seven chapters, as well as an introduction, and some miscellaneous stuff at the end. So, rather than list the headings, we'll just take a short look at each chapter, and explain what they are as we move along. Flipping the page, we find the introduction area, where they explain the concepts behind the book, as well as its purpose. If you've played AD&D for any length of time, you can skip this part, as its fairly redundant.

Flipping another page, we find ourselves in a section entitled "Humanoid Creatures", which explains some general things about the humanoids in the book, such as creating a humanoid character, level limits, as well as a few paragraphs explaining broadly about groups, classes, kits, and multi-class characters. But, this chapter really excels in providing a few ideas for adding humanoid characters into a ongoing campaign. While they only provide 4 ideas, they're not bad, and could give a beginning GM some help in adding them in, as well as maybe inspiring an experienced GM. You'll also see that they've continued their tradition of putting black and white pictures every few pages to hold your attention, and while they're not bad, they're still not of the quality of the color plates scattered in a few places throughout the book.

Moving to chapter 2, you find the heart of the book, as this is where the "humanoid Races" are listed. There are 25 entries in this chapter, and each entry is laid out in the same manner, with information ranging from Ability score adjustments, to special advantages and disadvantages, and much more. As you might guess, each entry contains quite a bit of information about the race in question, and even goes so far as to list an optional superstition for each race as well. The information in each entry is arranged logically, and thoughtfully, and gives you a clear understanding of each race. While most of the information regarding each races was culled form their entries in the Monstrous Compendium, some new information is added, including role-playing suggestions on how to play a member of that race. What are the races in the book, you ask? Well, the races with entries in the book are ... Aarakocra, Alaghi, Beastman, Bugbear, Bullywug-Advanced, Centaur, Fremlin, Giant-Kin:Firbolg, Giant-Kin:Voadkyn, Gnoll, Gnoll-Flind, Goblin, Hobgoblin, Kobold, Lizard Man, Minotaur, Mongrelman, Ogre\Half Ogre, Ogre Mage, Orc\Half Orc, Pixie, Satyr, Saurial, Swanmay, and Wemic. As you can tell, they have a wide variety of races represented, although they didn't include every humanoid race that they could have, but I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, or it could wind up as big as a phone book. Some of the races in the book are quite wimpy, while others are quite powerful. So, in order to maintain game balance somewhat, the truly powerful races, such as Giant-Kin, have to have more than the regular amount of experience to advance levels in their class. This seems to be a fair trade-off, except that some of the wimpier races, such as Kobolds, get no real special benefits to offset the disadvantages they wind up with, so the balance between the race is not as great as it could be.

One problem I noticed, is that they included no aquatic humanoids, such as Nixies, or Tritons. And while this is hardly a big loss, as most campaigns take place on land, there are plenty of opportunities for the creative GM to add in a regular aquatic humanoid to the party, such as a campaign that takes place on a sailing vessel, or even underwater. All in all, the races chapter is well done, and gives players a wide variety to choose from, as well as trying to help players with their attempt to role-play a character of that race. Flipping some more pages...Hey! Who ate the greasy food, before flipping these pages? Anyway, we next come to the Kits area, which lists kits for humanoid characters. There's a number of kits here, of which a few are just variants of their kits or classes. They're categorized according to class, and are: Tribal Defenders, Mine Rowdies, Pit Fighters, Sellswords, Saurial Paladins, Wilderness Protectors, Hedge Wizards, Humanoid Scholars, Outlaw Mages, Shamans, Witch Doctors, Oracles, War Priests, Wandering Mystics, Scavengers, Tramps, Tunnel Rats, Shadows, Humanoid Bards. As you might notice from some of the names, there are already kits similar to some of them, that have just been altered to fit a humanoid race. Such as Tramps, which are similar to Beggars from the Thieves handbook. The kits are alright, but none of them seem all that interesting, or exciting. These are no-multi-class kits. Moving on, we find that the next chapter deals with humanoid proficiencies, and there are some interesting new ones here, designed with the humanoid in mind. You'll find a Close-Quarter Fighting proficiency, and a Natural Fighting proficiency to help those with natural attacks, like claws or such. You'll also find Wild Fighting, and an intriguing new one called Danger Sense, which enables your character to sense nearby danger, which I know many adventurer wish they could do. There are descriptions of these new proficiencies, as well as descriptions of ones that have come out in other handbooks, but which are appropriate for humanoid characters.

Flipping some more pages...ooops, hold up a minute, a couple pages stuck together, must be the fault of the guy with the greasy fingers. Ah, there we go, moving on to the next chapter, we find that it deals with role-playing humanoids, and what life as a humanoid is like, as well as the bestial traits of the humanoid races. There's also a section devoted to the complications that a humanoid character could wind up facing in a campaign, and range from being arrested to being exploited, with other fun things that could really ruin a humanoid's day. This chapter reads well, and has some interesting ideas to give the GM on what to do to a humanoid character, as well as what life as a humanoid character is like to a degree.

Moving on, we reach chapter 6, which deals entirely with Superstitions, which are an optional part of the handbook. This chapter explains superstitions in game terms, as well as how to use they in play. There's also an extensive list of possible superstitions for your characters to be afflicted with. The superstitions idea is not a bad one, and having it as an optional feature is nice. I feel it should be the characters choice as to whether they are sidled with this additional bother or not, as it's their character, and they know best how they want that character's personality to be, and not have it dependent on some die roll. Moving on...ah ah ah, don't dawdle back there looking at the list of all the superstitions. We still have some more pages to cover, and then you can go back and look over all the superstitions you want.

Reaching chapter 7, we see that it deals with Arms & Armor for humanoids, and gives armor restrictions, weapon breakage, as well as listing a bunch of new weapons used specifically by certain races. These weapons are varied, and include the dreaded Flindbar, and Lizard Man dart. The weapons very in size from the teeny pixie-sized ones, to the huge giant-kin weapons. This chapter also has a table listing the weapons, just like the one in the Player's Handbook. Finally, we finish with the chapters, and you would think you'd be done with the handbook, but guess again, as there's a lengthy appendix at the rear of the book, and it's mostly filled with tables. It starts with a height comparison of the various races, and then follows up with table after table. The tables are updates to tables listed in the Players Handbook, and list the different heights, weights, ages, and aging effects of the various races, as well as bunches of other stuff. There are 13 tables in all. And, as you've noticed, we're basically done looking through it, as the few things left are just the Humanoid Kit creation sheet, as well as Humanoid character sheets for each of the classes.

So, overall, the Humanoid handbook is a good investment if you're an AD&D player, or GM, looking to spice up your campaign by playing something a little out of the ordinary. It's well written, and edited, as most of the TSR products are, and is laid out nicely. And the information contained within is helpful to most GMs no matter what type of AD&D campaign they run, as long as they're willing to add humanoid PCs to it. Also, it can make for quite a change of pace, when the party runs up against that group of Kobolds, and instead of the wimpy MC version expected, they are facing a few Multi-Classed 8th level Fighter/Cleric NPCs. That ought to bring a smile to their faces.

More Reviews

Back to Table of Contents -- SHADIS Issue No. #9
Back to SHADIS List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1993 by Alderac Group
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com