Aasimar & Tiefling: Guidebook to the Planetouched

Game: Aasimar & Tiefling: Guidebook to the Planetouched
Publisher: Green Ronin
Series: Dungeons and Dragons
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 10th, July 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10   [ Good ]
Total Score: 7
Average Score: 7.00

The Planes can be a funny issue in a D&D game. This is a review of Green Ronin product so I might as well use another Green Ronin product as a discussion starter. It was a Freeport supplement where it became important that the characters were never able to find a forked metal rod in the entirely of Freeport lest they bugger off to a different Plane. The rod would have been a handy spell component. Couldn’t a smith make one?

I like this example (not just because it pokes fun at the difficulties of pre-written adventures and dangers of high magic vs plot) but because it shows both the strengths and weaknesses of the Planes.

You can do fantastic things with the Planes – like set an entire adventure in one in such a way that the players might not work out why things a little different. You can screw up games entirely with them too – like players avoiding your carefully constructed web of plot strands by nipping off to the Abyss for a brawl.

I’ve been in D&D games where DMs used the Planes and the battles there as a way to justify D&D’s awful alignment system. “Lawful Evil” as an alignment simply meant that, whether you like it or not, most of your actions benefited the Lawful Evil side in the Planar wars. I quite like the no choice aspect and the suggestion of a raging war, far away, but vast enough to affect and effect your life. I guess the planetouched are a living breathing example of this. They have no choice of their heritage.

The Aasimar and Tieflings are planetouched. They have either a celestial or fiendish ancestry. That’s not to say that either parent was a celestial or fiend – if that was the case then the child would be a half-outsider.

The book is titled “Aasimar & Tieflings” with the sub-title “A Guidebook to the Planetouched”. That’s possibly the wrong way around as the book lingers longer on the Planetouched than on the Aasimar & Tieflings. Until this book the phrase Planetouched was synonymous with Aasimars and Tieflings anyway. Now we’ve many more Planetouched. This supplement not only introduces more Planetouched but builds on the Bastards and Bloodlines half-race building rules to allow you to make hundreds of different types of Planetouched.

Green Ronin has a criss-crossing catalogue of Plane inspired books. If you’ve the The Unholy Warrior’s Handbook, Book of Fiends or the excellent The Book of the Righteous then you’ll be able to put all these products together and build something far richer. Importantly, you don’t have to have any of these extra books to get your money’s worth from this one.

The supplement gets going by looking at Planetouched archetypes; are you a freethinker, a corruptor, outcast or tyrant. This sort of thing is worth thinking about. I suspect many newbies eye up the Planetouched special abilities and fancy those. I’d much rather encourage players to think role first and roll second. The book runs through the main classes and how either an aasimar or tiefling might full that role.

As a companion point to enjoying the roleplaying aspect in Planetouched archetypes, I don’t like to see discussions based on stat scores. If you’re not dexterous then it doesn’t mean you’re less likely to be a thief. The gangs of fat kids on my block (Neds, if you speak British) are about as dexterous as the cakes they stuff in their mouth but this doesn’t stop the buggers from trying to steal anything they can get away with.

The book moves on to looking at the Aasimars and Tieflings as d20 supplements tend to look at other races. This is typical of D&D. Orcs tend to be similar the world over, as with gnomes and elves. Some of the best half-orc supplements (such as, ironically enough, Green Ronin’s own Wrath & Rage) knew not to try suggest that one half-orc was like any other. For my tastes the Aasimar and Tiefling book is too ready to treat all Aasimars like all other Aasimars and all Tieflings like all other Tieflings.

We’re still in chapter one when we get the rules for building your own planetouched. You need to mix a humanoid with an outsider. Why not a bugbear-titan or a hafling-night hag? This Guidebook to the Planetouched introduces three new Outsides; Chaos Horrors, Hallucinaughts and Powers suitable for breeding. There are other new Outsiders in Aasimar and Tiefling which aren’t so suitable for the Planetouched angle.

The pre-designed (and illustrated with a few annoying exceptions) Planetouched creatures include the Fetch (quasits and Halfling descendants), Jinx (gnomes and fiends), Janjanni (human and genies), Khazerkas (azers and dwarves), Nergaz (orc and demon), Silvan (elf and, um, some naff story about the Astral Plane) and Similem (invisible stalker and half-elf). The Nergaz will make especially memorable foes.

Chapter Two gets going with two examples of what comes before the Planetouched. Here we find the Half-Outsiders. The Planetouched are the children (grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc) of the Half-Outsider. The Cambion (half-fiend) and Nephilim (half-celestial) are presented template style – with suitable bonuses rather than as a monster block. If you have a push over for a DM you might even get to play one as a character. I think it’s better to save these, if you want to use them at all, as rare NPCs. If you want to further chase the half-outside or half-anything-you-think-of then it’ll be a trip to your local store and a copy of Bastards and Bloodlines for you.

Aasimar and Tiefling; A Guidebook to the Planetouched settles comfortably into the traditional role of a d20 supplement. We have a chapter of feats. There are some strange feats here – Ancestry ones. How’s about “Abyssal Spore” as a feat, omit a damaging spore once per hour? (Wouldn’t that be a character best avoided during times of stress!) The “At Your Peril” aura cows enemies trying to attack you – at a cost of a point of willpower damage (temporary, I assume). That’s just the first two off a list of about 30. Pretty strange stuff. I quite like Lantern Blood – which lets you create daylight and Night Skin which helps you hide. Most of the feats are in this strange otherworldly theme but that’s not a bad thing.

We continue in the tradition of d20 supplements and move on to Prestige Classes. Take your pick of the Astral Reaver, Cosmosopher, Energist, Ethereal Pilot, Planar Guide, Planomancer, Plane Singer, Warrior Maidens of the Valkyrie and the Xen Chi Mystic. There can’t be many d20 gamers out there who still need more prestige classes but this lot is different. I can’t imagine there are many d20 gamers are overflowing with Prestige Classes that fit the Planetouched so well! The DM really needs to design a game with one or more of these prestige classes in mind before they can be used. Given how tricky the Planes can be in many campaigns I think it’s fair to say that these prestige classes easily exasperate this problem.

There are nearly nine pages of new spells and more new magic items and skills. That’s another typical d20 supplement chapter done – but it’s done with Green Ronin’s usual professional quality and roleplay experience.

Chapter Six is given over the Planar Perils – to monsters – and there’s a touch of Lovecraft here, I think. The Chaos Horror is described as, “This sprawling mass of flesh, teeth, hair and bone pours over the landscape in a giant smear. Its form changes and undulates, as it warps and melts everything in its path.” We have the Shifting Horror and the Children of Dreams too and these both strike me as Lovecraft in style. There’s nothing wrong with that – I quite like it in fact. There are a bunch of other monsters too – including the rather scary Organ Thief.

Aasimar and Tiefling: A Guidebook to the Planetouched gets the thumbs up. I’m sure it’s traditional and inspirational enough to appeal to a wide slew of d20 gamers, it appeals to me. I wish all the new planetouched had been illustrated. It’s very good that we’re given the half-breed rules we need for creating more Planetouched without needing to have Bastards and Bloodlines. You can have Bastards and Bloodlines without feeling you’ve bought a book of duplicate copy.