Game: Ultimate Feats
Publisher: Mongoose Publishing
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 19th, December 2002
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10 [ Good ]
Total Score: 8
Average Score: 4.00
A book with two hundred and fifty-six pages and a hardback cover is the sort of weapon a frustrated GM could threaten to beat the annoying munchkin over the head with. Not so this book. I fear if Ultimate Feats is brought too near a munchkin that the bugger would swell with power, or worse, drool. Ultimate Feats is a book with a real “core rules” feel to it. It’ll thump down on your gaming table with the same weighty thwack as the Player’s Handbook does and probably more so. It is about as far from core rules as you could get though, Ultimate Feats consists of re-printed feats from other Mongoose Publishing products but there’s also a sizeable chunk from other d20 publishers too. There’s AEG, Bastion Press, Soverign Press, Fantasy Flight, Green Ronin, Pinnacle, Natural 20 Press and White Wolf to name just a few. There are a lot of other Mongoose books, at my last count there were more Mongoose books than Wizard’s D&D products. In Mongoose’s product line you’ll find the futuristic Judge Dredd RPG and you’ll find futuristic and modern day feats in Ultimate Feats.
It’s quite simple. You won’t find anything other than feats in this book. Ultimate Prestige Classes had tips and tricks for prestige class creation in its introduction but there’s nothing similar this time round. The introduction simply explains the break up of the book; by class type classification (feats of the arcane, feats of arms, etc), types of feats (psionic, metamagic, etc) and that you’re lucky to ever get more than six feats in a game.
Yeah, there are psionic feats. That’ll cheer some people up. The book isn’t entirely too heavily re-print either, there are new feats and there are likely to be new-to-you feats.
Turn to the back of the book if you’re thinking about buying it. There’s a complete and total index. I’m glad the book includes the OGL feats (Cleave and co) from the core rules. It means that you really can use Ultimate Feats as your ultimate resource for feats. You want the rules for any given feat from the main or Mongoose rules then it’s probably in this book. There are pages of tables too; rows and rows of feats with their prerequisites. If you’re one of the people like myself who really do like to have everything nicely organised then the index and all these ordered tables are a winning strategy.
I’ll run down the list of categories in the book. The list will speak for itself.
– Feats of the Arcane
– Feats of Arms (oh so many!)
– Feats of Blood
o Elven Feats
o Dwarven Feats
o Halfling Feats
o Gnome Feats
o Half-Orc Feats
– Feats of Creation (making stuff)
– Feats of the Divine
– Feats of the Mind
– Feats of the Monstrous
– Feats of Power (metamagic)
– Feats of Skill
– Feats of Stealth and Song
– Feats of the Unliving
– Feats of Today and the Future
It is nice to have so many feats without any cramping. You can find feats that take up nearly an entire page by themselves. I also found the inclusion of monster and undead feats especially pleasing. Those sections are about as close you can get to a breath of fresh air without going off topic. Monster feats do also tend be those that are scattered far and wide through different books, appearing only in ones and twos, so they’re a good choice for inclusion in Ultimate Feats on that level.
You’ll recognise many of the illustrations in Ultimate Feats. Some of the artwork here has been re-printed as well. I don’t particularly mind this. Sometimes it’s too easy to link a particular image to the rule mechanics or flavour text it initially appeared beside and by be seeing the same picture in a different context you can disentangle this association. It’s not just any other illustration that’s made it into this book either; it’s the good ones. I can think of a few in the Encyclopaedia Arcane/Divine series where the full-page illustration in the inside cover is better than the outside. A few of these great pictures appear for an encore in Ultimate Feats; they have a page all to themselves but they’re not in colour.
Ultimate Feats is a success. Two thumbs up. Ah but there’s a caveat. There’s only so much you can do with a book of feats and Ultimate Feat’s success is due in no small part to the extremely useful way in which it acts as master list.
