Hero Builder's Guidebook (concluded)

Alright, let's wrap this up. This time for sure. The next section is on Selecting an Alignment. Not really something I think is necessary, but maybe for newbies who don't understand alignments it might be okay. Basically, it's like those online quizzes that ask you a bunch of questions and then tell you what Star Trek character you are. Except that it tells you what your character's alignment would be. The questionnaire covers relationship to family, to friends, to community, and to king and country, as well as your character's thoughts on crime and punishment, and business and the economy. Oh, and there are bonus essay questions if you really want to dig into your character's motivation. Frankly, as a writer I don't put that much detail into figuring out a character's alignment; I just write and let it come out naturally. But for some people, this might be fun. It's not for me, so I'm not going to score the quiz for Relgar. Besides, he's already chaotic good; I determined that when I wrote him up.

There's also a brief part on changing your character's alignment and what is involved, before we get into the Planning Your Future Career section. This is where you decide what you want your character to look like at 20th level, and work out exactly what feats, skills, etc. that you will need to get there. Some of the ideas they offer are The Ultimate Archer (focusing on ranged weapon feats, obviously) which can, for elves, include the Arcane Archer prestige class; the Swashbuckler, usually a fighter/rogue or a fighter/monk (how you get from monk to swashbuckler is beyond me, but whatever), who focuses on Dexterity and Charisma rather than Strength and uses feats that take advantage of their mobility; the Prizefighter, who is basically a gladiator and often takes Exotic Weapon Proficiencies; the Necromancer, who is usually a wizard, cleric, or multiclassed between the two, and focuses on necromantic spells; the Gadgetmaster, for gnomes and halflings who specialize in crafting items; the Manipulator, who is a bard, sorcerer, wizard or rogue who focuses on their Charisma and Intelligent and gets lots of people-dealing skills (Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Bluff, etc.); the Research Wizard, who chooses lots of metamagic feats in order to come up with great additions to her spell arsenal; the Sneak, a rogue/ranger or rogue/druid who does stealth stuff and focuses on avoiding danger rather than confronting it; the Counterspeller, a fighter/wizard who can surprise his magic-wielding opponents by countering their magic before he cleaves them in twain; and the Friar, a cleric or druid who focuses on self-sufficiency and being a wandering priest for the people (Friar Tuck being the classic example). Quite a list, isn't it? And while they don't spell out complete career paths for all 20 levels, they do give the essentials and suggestions. Useful stuff, but it also shows how 3rd edition became focused on character builds instead of action/adventure gaming.

Lastly, the book has an appendix called The Rule of Names. This is a guide to naming your character in a way that suits the game; don't call your fighter Fred or Bob, don't use Gandalf or Merlin as your wizard names, and don't be silly (unless the game is going to be a silly one to begin with). There are suggestions for borrowing names from literature (the dwarves in The Hobbit have been done to death), or making them up, and ideas for nicknames. Useful stuff.

However, more useful is the list of racial names. There are dwarven and gnome clan names, elven family names, and then a whole heap of names for each race in alphabetic order. The iconic characters' names are in these lists in bold type to make them stand out. Several people have stated that this is the most valuable part of the entire book, especially people who struggle with naming their characters.

And that is it. The Hero Builder's Guidebook is a useful product for beginning players and people new to 3rd edition, but not so much to experienced players. Still, I'm glad I have it; there are plenty of great ideas here to inspire players to greater heights of role-playing.

Next time, we'll start our dive into the next issue of Dragon Magazine. Stay tuned.