Game: Hammer and Helm
Publisher: Green Ronin
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 10th, July 2002
Reviewer’s Rating: 9/10 [ Something special ]
Total Score: 10
Average Score: 5.00
Hammer & Helm is the first in Green Ronin’s Races of Renown series. It is also the first book I’ve seen in the new OGL Interlink brand. Hammer and Helm isn’t the first in the OGL Interlink since partner publisher Paradigm Concepts used it first with their “The Lords of the Peaks: The Essential Guide to Giants”. I’m not entirely sure that OGL Interlink is about. I know it was kind enough to change its name from OGL Interlock to OGL Interlink after minnow d20 publisher Interlock Games waved a flag and stamped a foot. I think the OGL Interlink aims to produce “related” books in a way which makes sure that Company A doesn’t write a rival book on similar subject matter to Company B. There should be a plus side of this deal to those of us who are merely players and DMs in that these two (or I guess, in theory, more) companies can actually make use of each other’s work in a more aggressive way than the humble OGL allows. For example, there’s a dwarf prestige class in Hammer & Helm called the “Stormhammer”; perhaps there’s a prestige class in Paradigm’s giant book called “Stormhammer Squasher”, perhaps not. Hmm. I’m not convinced. Couldn’t that be done with standard OGL rules? Time will tell. That said, I’ll tell you what I am convinced about and that’s the potential to use the OGL Interlink name and logo as a quality assurance mark. There was a slim chance of me ever purchasing The Essential Guide to Giants before I read Hammer & Helm but I’ve been so impressed by the latter that the chances of me making a purchase of the former have significantly risen.
Flick through Hammer & Helm and you’ll be impressed. You don’t even have to pause to read anything. Just soak up the clever layout of the book, notice how much information has been tightly packed in without sacrificing readability, appreciate the artwork and even wonder if 10 pages of appendixes in a 112-paged book is a record. It’s a black and white book, held together between colourful glossy covers. At $19.95 it’s fairly priced too. I was surprised at how some apparently small layout changes can make such a difference to the appearance of the book. In these d20 days I’m used to books having sidebars of illustration on the left and right hand edges of an open book. I think the purpose of these sidebars is for appearance; text looks wrong if it runs all the way to the edge of the page and a reader needs somewhere to put his fingers so he can read without covering up what he’s trying to read. Hammer and Helm has moved these bars to the top and bottom of the pages where they decorate the current chapter name at the top and the name of the book and page number at the bottom. There are sidebars too, the text doesn’t run to the edge of the page, but the sidebars are simply white space. I like the resulting effect. It doesn’t come across as too blocky or even appear to reduce the amount of words per page. In a hobby that publishes pages after pages of tables and charts it seems only to be common sense to design the whole page in such a way as to help reduce the “glare” of any dark grey table of numbers that might be required and this is what the top/bottom bars seem to do.
I liked the appearance of the book. What about the content?
There are six chapters and lots in the appendix. The chapters are those that you’d probably expect. The first, “The Way of the Mountain”, talks about the dwarf race, the second lists new feats and the third chapter introduces the expected prestige classes. Chapter four is given over to new creatures and comes before the “Spells & Magic” chapter and the last chapter runs through about 20 pages of equipment.
I really liked the first chapter. One of the nearly insurmountable problems with the dwarf race is that it is besieged by its stereotypical image of mountain warriors and smiths. In the section “Alternative Dwarven Racial Concepts” it pushes forwards, you guessed it, alternatives to the stereotypical image. Actually, the section starts off easily, suggesting conservative changes or emphasizing certain parts of the stereotype above others. “The Dying Race” is a commonly used concept since it is the sort of tragic heroism that fits nicely into many fantasy genres and appeals to a wide range of gamers. Despite their stamina and prowess the dwarven empire is crumbling under the constant onslaught of goblinoids or other forces. The “Isolationist Artisans” is another concept that will immediately be recognised by gamers. It’s a harder concept to use if you want non-outsider dwarves in your adventuring party but it does make it easier to keep dwarf artefacts and creations as treasure and rewards for your group rather than have them reduced to standard adventuring equipment. After these two Hammer & Helm starts to get adventurous and adds to the list; Desert Warriors, Light Haters, Lords of Battle, Skyfarers, New Arrivals or even Minions of Evil. You can get a pretty good idea of where the racial concept is going from the name alone but the book debates each one and then suggests what an archetypical encounter with such a dwarf culture might be like. Hammer and Helm also offers up alternative racial abilities to each of these possible cultures. Light Haters, for example, have their favoured class changed to Barbarian, drop the racial Craft and Appraise check bonuses but gain ones to Craft (trapmaking), Listen, Spot and Wilderness Lore when they’re underground.
The same chapter finds a corner for a brief discussion on a sample Dwarven Pantheon. Dwarf religion resurfaces throughout the book; in prestige classes, spells and even creatures but there’s little structure to it. Hammer & Helm picks up on the triumvirate of gods common to most clans, suggesting that you can take a generic “forge god” with typical domains and alignment but give him different names. You can do the same with a “merchant god” and an “earth mother”. This is an idea I’ve seen in other books but where that’s then gone on to include temples and followers. Hammer & Helms seems to prefer to present the dwarf race as rather more elemental than they are divine. This might not be a bad thing.
The chapter of feats also introduces some innovation. That’s just as well. Feats and Prestige Classes are fast becoming a double-edged sword for publishers. I can’t be the only one out there who is fast becoming a little tired of discovering yet more feats and yet I’d be the first one to point out that something was missing if a book like Hammer & Helm was produced without them. There’s a big table of feats at the start of the chapter, it lists the feat and the prerequisite but not a summary of the bonus or a page number reference; I suspect that’s due to the impossibility of fitting all that onto one page. The innovation comes in the form of two new types of feats: bonding and bloodline feats. I’ve said previously that Hammer & Helm presents the dwarf race as rather elemental and this is especially clear with the bonding feats. Through long and fatiguing rituals a dwarf can bond himself to some aspect. The “Oath of Dreams” feat, for example, actually sees the dwarf bonding with the essence of the woodlands and becoming a fey, whereas the “Pledge of Flame” turns the dwarf into a creature of fire. The bloodline feats are great; they provide tangible game mechanics to back up the dwarven clan pride. Bloodlines open up a chain of feats available only to dwarfs of that bloodline. As with the bonding feats though some of the bloodline feats can be impressive and spectacular, better suited to flamboyant high fantasy than realism driven low fantasy.
Then, of course, there are prestige classes. The prestige classes are pretty good but then I suspect d20 authors write prestige classes as often as they reboot WinDoze. I like my prestige classes to be detailed through 10 levels but I’m willing to accept a few “special prestige” classes that only go as high as 5. That’s pretty much what Hammer & Helm offers, although I would rather the ratio of 10 level prestige classes and 5 level prestige classes was the other way around. There is an exception to this is that the Cavernsgaarder (their spelling, not mine) only has 3 levels of class. That’s the shortest prestige class I’ve seen to date.
Examples of the prestige classes include:
– Acolyte of the Crystal Path: A monk styled prestige class which sees the dwarf relish in the elementalism common in Hammer & Helm in hand. The Acolyte progresses through class levels, picking up such supernatural abilities as Emerald Fists, Earth Mastery and then Body of Crystal. Of course, the dwarf also gets increasingly heavy and likely to sink like a stone. :)
– Ironbound: This prestige class turns the wearing of armour into an art. The illustration that accompanies this prestige class provides a great summary, a block of metal, behind a shield and which might have a dwarf somewhere in side. The Ironbound lives the philosophy of “… if you cannot be overcome, you must eventually prevail.”
– Spirit Stone Defiler: An evil prestige class. Some dwarves put their understanding and knowledge of ancient dwarf spirit stones (a creation of Hammer & Helm but described in chapter six) to their own good rather than that of the clan.
– Thunderthrower: These are battle hardy dwarves who begin by throwing axes and hammers out from behind the lines of shields but who then charge forwards to join the fray and finish off the foe.
There are very much more prestige classes in the book than I’ve mentioned here but the above are a fairly good representation of what you’ll get. Most of the prestige classes have plenty of special abilities to add flavour to the class rather than just bigger stat bonuses.
The chapter on new creatures presents an interesting variety. It’s not just a list of new bad guys. The “Defenders of Mar-Namor” are presented as a template for corporeal undead. In Hammer & Helm they fall into the slightly uneasy category of allies to the dwarves, created by the Forge God to fend off an attack. There are arcane dwarves, Eldlorns, who are really fey but with a distance relation to the dwarf and plenty of the standard racial preferences. In this chapter you’ll also find stats on those creatures and dwarves created through successful or unsuccessful rites and rituals. The Hammerstruck are the mindless results of dwarves and others who failed the “Test of the Forge God” – a spell detailed in the next chapter. The Hammerstruck are presented as a template to allow GMs to apply the results to a range of races. They’re not really suited for PCs. The Iron-Souled are also presented as a template and can be the result of the player ready “Oath of Iron” bonding feat. There are also a few attempts to provide the dwarves with some suitable riding animals. One of the more strange of these mounts is the large construct armour of the Thaneguard. The Thaneguard can best be described as magically animated “power armour”. I think the Thaneguard would have been better suited to a steam-punk styled dwarf game.
There are nearly twenty pages of Spells and Magic. If you wish to make use of some of the rules given earlier on in the book, such as the Hammerstruck, you’ll have to pick up the trail here. There’s a new brand of magic, “Clanheart Magic” which is only available to those with the correct feat. There are also some new cleric domains. I like the suggested domains, very dwarven, although I do arch an eyebrow at each and every domain having “Campaign-specific deities chosen by the GM” as their entry for deities. There are plenty of new spells, it’s not just a token effort, many of the new additions though come from the school of magic “Clanheart” and they are rather powerful, I have a suspicion that GMs will have to rule its impossible to specialise in it since it’s presence will upset the balance of the Schools of Magic (Transmutation, Abjuration, etc) otherwise.
Dwarves are famed for their weapons and armour and so the equipment chapter on any “race” book is going to be a darn site easier to write for this race than others. There’s plenty of stuff in Hammer & Helm. I think there’s a risk that ever more impressive masterworks, magical weapons and armour and masterwork magic will lead to unbalanced games. Fortunately, so does the author and there’s a grey box that quickly points out this danger to GMs. Some people might think such an effort is a waste of space but I was appreciative of the effort. There really is a treasure trove of magical weapons and armour. Items like “golem plate” will make your players drool and its nice to see items like the “Lost Banner of Mar-Namor” tie in with earlier chapters and sections; in this case the undead defenders of Mar-Narmor. There is even a list of siege engines that are well suited to the combat style of dwarf defenders.
I mentioned the detailed appendix before but not what you might find in it. You’ll find neat and tidy summaries of stats for typical NPCs. That’s to say, a range of different NPCs, from fighters to priests and more specialised classes.
I really rather liked Hammer & Helm even though there are some parts of the book which I can’t ever see myself using. It has that balance between GM advice and useful rules to player friendly text (such as feats the GM is likely to approve, prestige classes which should fit into a few different campaigns and plenty of equipment). There’s just a short index but at least there’s one and the book is neatly organised and it is fairly easy to pick your way to the core concepts of the books. On the other hand, some of the less important points (such as the Hammerstruck in the creature section and then the matching magical/divine test a chapter on) can be harder to link together and may result in much frantic page flicking by a GM throwing something together quickly.
