An Endzeitgeist.com review
This installment of the Feats of Legend-series clocks in at 7 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 4 pages of content, so let's take a look!
This pdf begins with a handy table that sums up the feats with prereqs etc. and then dives straight into the feats, so what do they do?
-Boneyard Born: +1 DC for necromancy spells, +1 to all saves versus necromancy or death effects, can be qualified for via eldritch heritage and the undead bloodline. Odd, nonstandard formatting: A feat referred is italicized, something the pdf, confusingly continues to do.
-Dark Conduit: Adds your Con-mod to Cha-mod to determine the amount of healing you receive from any negative energy. I think this feat is a bit odd, to say the least - You don't add Cha-mod to healing. UNLESS you're talking about channel energy...but this feat extends to ALL types of negative energy, which includes spells and effects that do NOT add Cha-mod to the healing. Beyond the somewhat wonky 2-attributes-modifier to one effect (somewhat mitigated by the rarity of negative energy healed beings with both Cha and Con-score), the feat is odd and confusing, to say the least. Not gonna come near my table.
-Improved Dark Conduit: Resistance 5 vs. positive energy - quite cool, since we usually don't see the like.
-Greater Dark Conduit: Whenever you kill a creature, you gain fast healing 2 for Charisma modifier rounds. (Charisma is not properly capitalized, as an editing nitpick.) Subsequent killings reset the timer. NOt a fan, since this can be kitten-cheesed for infinite healing, when a generous daily cap, HDx2+Cha-mod, for example, would have prevented basically infinite healing.
-Deathless Determination: You gain Resist Level Drain and auto-remove them after 24 hours. The prereqs of an undead bloodline and Diehard justifies the power of this feat. (And yes, again, you can qualify for this via Eldritch Heritage.)
-False Unlife: +10 to Disguise to seem undead, but you detect as evil undead of your HD when seen via detect evil. Interesting!
-Grave-Touched: +4 to Fort-saves vs. poisons. Can be taken via aforementioned Eldritch Heritage/undead bloodline-combo.
-Improved Grave-Touched: +4 to Fort-saves versus diseases, save versus poisons increases to +6. Can be taken via aforementioned Eldritch Heritage/undead bloodline-combo...which is odd, since the alternate prereqs imply that just having Edlritch Bloodline and an undead bloodline allows for the bypassing of the previous, non-improved iteration of the feat. Here, the special-line actually detracts from the functionality of the feat, since simply basing it on the initial feat would have done the job sans ambiguity.
-Greater Grave-Touched: Save-bonus versus diseases changes to +6, you gain immunity to undead-spread diseases like mummy rot as well as immunity to poisons. Again, this ´can be taken via aforementioned Eldritch Heritage/undead bloodline-combo...which is odd, since the alternate prereqs imply that just having Edlritch Bloodline and an undead bloodline allows for the bypassing of the previous, non-greater iteration of the feat.
-Scholar of Undeath: +5 to all lore-checks to identify undead and their abilities. You also increase the DC of your channel energy, command or Turn Undead by +2...which is pretty brutal, considering how channel already is powerful and has a scaling DC. Still, worthwhile and nice.
-Improved Scholar of Undeath: The base-feat's bonus increases to +10 and the DC-increase to +3.
-Greater Scholar of Undeath: +2 to all saves versus Ex and SU abilities of undead and the DC-increase for channel et al. becomes +4. The whole feat-chain is interesting in concept, though I do consider the DC-increases rather massive. Personally, I consider the bonus extending beyond +2 to be too min-maxy - personally, I will add an Int-prereq to emphasize the scholar-angle the feats imply. (And, via MAD, decrease excess Channel-DC-stacking...)
-Hardened Flesh: Your AC is treated as +2 for the purpose of confirming critical hits and you gain DR 1/-.
-Improved Hardened Flesh: AC-bonus is treated as +4 instead for the critical hit confirmation. DR increases to DR 3/- - like these two feats!
-Necrotic Poisoner: Contact and injury poisons you manufacture can affect undead. NICE!
-Reckless Revenant: You are immune to fear effects...which would be a bit much for one feat...but the prerequisite requires you having risen from the dead...which is rather cool. Sold -even more so, since it takes breath of life into account.
-Redeemed: Gain healing by positive energy, but also be damaged by negative energy as though you were alive. Can't be combined with Dark Conduit. Nice one.
-Scent of the Grave: Favored enemy (undead) characters gain scent to detect undead.
-Tongues of the Dead: Gain Necril as a language as well as +2 to Bluff, Intimidate, Diplomacy and Sense Motive when dealing with intelligent undead. Situational and okay, but not too exciting.
-Touch of the Undead: This feat: "Allows undead you command or control to deliver touch spells for you." That's the whole crunch text of the feat. All right, I'll play: HOW? At what range? Do you have to transfer the touch held to the undead? As what action? Is there a maximum range? Can unintelligent undead hold charges? This feat is well-intentioned and flavorful, but horribly fails at its given task.
-Undead Avoidance: Gain +2 dodge bonus to AC versus undead. Losing Dex-bonus to AC deprives you of the benefits. Okay, I guess.
-Universal Recipient: Okay, we end on a nice one: Reduced DC for attaching necrografts and reduced Con damage for necrografting surgery.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are per se solid, though people that are picky about the fonts used should know that the "o"s are slightly larger than other letters. There are a couple of faulty italicizations here as well. Layout is GORGEOUS - the pdf adheres to a two-column full-color standard with skulls on the borders and a greenish tint - this is a nice-looking pdf. The pdf sports a nice full-color artwork. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.
Neal Litherland, Simon Muñoz and Brian Berg have crafted a book that sports some high-concept, intriguing feats - and indeed, there are some feats herein that are rather neat. You can justifiably call any content herein overpowered and it should make sense in most games, even the dark/low-fantasy-focused games. At the same time, there are a few pieces herein that don't work as intended, which detracts from, unfortunately, some of the most interesting feats herein. In the end, this is a solid book with some rough edges and hence, my final verdict will clock in at 3 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.
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