Hyboria's Fxxx - still worth getting?
- Thread starter Solmyr
- Start date
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
In principle yes, Radio Yerevan would say, but it depends on your game.
I play a very wilderness-heavy campaign, so "Fiercest" is very useful, while I doubt we could make a lot out of "Finest".
Fiercest contains... damn, I had written a little review of it, but it seems to be among the recent forum crash casualties. So here we go again:
* 36 pages of how all the races mix with the Fierce classes; including a new race (Iranistani). This is imho the least useful part of the book.
* 21 pages "Secrets of the Fierce", new special rules about Pushing Abilities and more detailed rules for certain skills like Survival and Herbalism; pretty interesting and useful
* 11 pages "Abroad in Hyboria", in-depth rules about covering distance and negotiating various types of terrain; good for detailed wilderness campaigns;
* 4 pages of Fierce Feats, what it says. Some of the feats are useless and some should be rebalanced (e.g. it makes no sense at all to make Power Attack a prereq for Two Weapon Strike).
* 10 pages of new combat maneuvres and Borderer fighting styles, sweet stuff
* 45 whopping pages of multiclass builds for each Fierce class with every core class. Typically the builds are 10/10 and of course there is very little new info there, but you also get rules variants written for the particular builds, typically adding certain skills to the class list and switching out class abilities. All in all, not bad, some really neat ideas in there.
All in all, it's a fine supplement; as I said it's great for any wilderness-heavy campaign and also generally useful for any of the Fierce classes.
I play a very wilderness-heavy campaign, so "Fiercest" is very useful, while I doubt we could make a lot out of "Finest".
Fiercest contains... damn, I had written a little review of it, but it seems to be among the recent forum crash casualties. So here we go again:
* 36 pages of how all the races mix with the Fierce classes; including a new race (Iranistani). This is imho the least useful part of the book.
* 21 pages "Secrets of the Fierce", new special rules about Pushing Abilities and more detailed rules for certain skills like Survival and Herbalism; pretty interesting and useful
* 11 pages "Abroad in Hyboria", in-depth rules about covering distance and negotiating various types of terrain; good for detailed wilderness campaigns;
* 4 pages of Fierce Feats, what it says. Some of the feats are useless and some should be rebalanced (e.g. it makes no sense at all to make Power Attack a prereq for Two Weapon Strike).
* 10 pages of new combat maneuvres and Borderer fighting styles, sweet stuff
* 45 whopping pages of multiclass builds for each Fierce class with every core class. Typically the builds are 10/10 and of course there is very little new info there, but you also get rules variants written for the particular builds, typically adding certain skills to the class list and switching out class abilities. All in all, not bad, some really neat ideas in there.
All in all, it's a fine supplement; as I said it's great for any wilderness-heavy campaign and also generally useful for any of the Fierce classes.
FailedSpotCheck
Mongoose
I found them all to be enjoyable reads. Lots o' crunch! 
Jeffreywns
Mongoose
I've collected them all and passed them out to my players who found them useful enough when picking feats and such. One player even bought the "Fiercest" for his Hyrkanian Nomad. As a GM I used the "Fiercest book the most. None of my players have used any of the Multi-classes in any of the books though.
My vote is yes on at least the "Fiercest" book and depending on your budget and interest (and players) go from there. Hope that helps.
My vote is yes on at least the "Fiercest" book and depending on your budget and interest (and players) go from there. Hope that helps.
I'm still using Atlantean Edition with no plans to upgrade to the Second Edition. I'd say that the books are 3/4 useful as it is. Mainly, I've found the multiclass combination paths to be just waste of space. I wish they had used those pages for prestige classes instead. I bought Hyboria's Fiercest for nature stuff, while a player bought Fallen & Finest. Based on what I've seen about the Second Edition, there should be no trouble converting the stuff to it. I found the fluff texts more useful than the crunch anyway.
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
Majestic7 said:
At least it would totally have sufficed to write _just_ the "Rules Variants" and _maybe_ the "Recommended Options" for each of the MCs. Truly, printing the full 20 level table for each of the 24 combinations is a waste of space.
But most other sections of the book are really great. For instance, the additional Borderer Combat Styles can add greatly to character diversity. NPC Borderers (Hunters) from any region between Asgard and Vendhya now can have their own regional style. All told there are 26 new combat styles.
Some of these are clearly inferior and others better than average. Still, I marked a full dozen of the new styles as "worthwhile", which is a dozen more than we had before.
Just making the Devil's Advocate here: I got them all three and for me they're a total waste of money, except if you're a hardcore fan (that's me) or very much into D20 rules details (that's not me). To my opinion, you'd better get Return to the Road of Kings, Ruins of Hyboria or Across the Thunder River. There you'll get real Conan stuff, and not just another lousy D20 rules supplement. But then again, it depends on what you're looking for...
The Fallen book has some neat expanded rules on bluff, diplomacy, gather info, intimidate and disguise. Good stuff if your into or like to occasionally run a courtly intrigue or adventure where the players have to keep a low profile and cant just hit everything to get their answers.
I totally agree. The rules variants are interesting. But to reprint under each combo that an Hyborian is a good choice because he has three free Feats sucked, the tables (most don't even include the rules variants) and some repeated "advices" too...Clovenhoof said:
Yeah, 40/45 pages when 12/15 would have been enough is a total waste of space.
True too.But most other sections of the book are really great. For instance, the additional Borderer Combat Styles can add greatly to character diversity. NPC Borderers (Hunters) from any region between Asgard and Vendhya now can have their own regional style. All told there are 26 new combat styles.
Some of these are clearly inferior and others better than average. Still, I marked a full dozen of the new styles as "worthwhile", which is a dozen more than we had before.
IMO Fiercest is the best of the three "F" books.
