Game: The Unholy Warrior’s Handbook
Publisher: Green Ronin
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 28th, July 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10 [ Really good ]
Total Score: 20
Average Score: 6.67
The Unholy Warrior’s Handbook is part of Green Ronin’s Master Class series but the book’s connection to the widely successful and hugely popular The Book of the Righteous can not be understated. The Book of the Righteous introduced the Holy Warrior and gamers quickly adopted the class. If the Holy Warriors serve the good gods then surely there are Unholy Warriors for the vile gods too? Yes, there are, and they’ve got a US$16.95, 80-paged, supplement all to themselves.
It doesn’t happen right at the start of the book (that’s were the rules for this core class are) but the Handbook does explain the difference between the unholy warrior and blackguard. Blackguards work for themselves and do evil. Unholy warriors serve a dark master. Blackguards can serve a higher power but they don’t need to in order to use their powers; the unholy warrior is dependant on his evil patron for his. The unholy warrior is a core class. The blackguard is an ideal prestige class for the warrior and the Handbook offers some more prestige class choices.
The Unholy Warrior class is carefully constructed. Its a warrior class, duh, but has access to spells (eventually) as well. Unholy Warriors are granted domains by the powers they worship and a Dark Ally at 6th level. The Dark Ally will be something like a fiendish warhorse but it’s up to the unholy warrior to decide exactly what. Furthermore the ally is a tool, something to use, and so there’s no empathic link between rider and mount. If you’re tempted to use the Unholy Warrior as a prestige class then there’s a quick mention of suitable requirements.
If an unholy warrior core class appeals to you then the prestige classes will be sinfully tempting. The Angel Hunter is a crazy sicko but frightfully good at their self-appointed quest. The Champion of the Dark Seven gets to be my favourite prestige class in the book and from many recent supplements too. The class is tied to the plane of Gehenna but essentially you pick a sin and enjoy different benefits based on it. If you focus on lust (and why not?) then enjoy a boost to your Charisma score but suffer from a slight profane penalty to effective charisma score for spell casting. The Knight of Bedlam has a large table of mutations to bounce dice for. In opposition to the chaos of bedlam there’s the Order’s Tyrant prestige class too. Nice.
There’s a load of special abilities in the book, so many, in fact, that they have chapter two all to themselves. Why so many? These special abilities are granted to the unholy warrior in conjunction with the two domains the warrior’s patron grants them. An unholy warrior with Wrath on her portfolio will have Rage and Enhanced move at level one and then Rabid Frenzy at level two.
There are new feats, of course, they chase up the special abilities and appear in chapter three. The Vestigial Twin feat gives the unholy warrior a living twin inside his own body, one that shares his own flesh; it’s rather like a horribly perverted Siamese twin. The Vestigial Twin has intelligence, wisdom, charisma and an ego score of its own but no means of self-propulsion. The feats and special abilities seem about right for the unholy warrior. They are powerful because they give the class more options but the game balance within the book is tight. Game balance outside the bounds of the book depends entirely on what you’re comparing it against but it does well against likely options such as The Avatar’s Handbook.
The Unholy Warrior class has a spell list. There are lots of new spells to support it. You don’t need the Book of the Righteous or any of Green Ronin‘s Armies of Hell series to make full use of the list. If you have these books or want to add blackguard spells then you’re advised to add them yourself.
You don’t need the The Book of the Righteous to use Dark Masters either, the chapter devoted to those the unholy warriors might serve, but if you do have both then you’ll benefit from the combination. The chapter looks at evil powers like Asmodeus and Thellas and notes additional class skills, spells, suitable dark allies, the appropriate alignment and so on for each. If you’d rather have your unholy warrior following the edicts of an entity from Legions of Hell, another Green Ronin success, then there’s offerings here for you too.
Chapter Six looks at exotic mounts and dark minions. I think an unholy warrior would loose much of her panache if she rode into combat on the back of a horse. There’s a full-page table of quick alternatives and the level the unholy warrior would need to be to call the creature as a dark ally. Yup. A level 24 unholy warrior can ride into combat on the back of a Tarrasque. A level 26 unholy warrior will do one better and counter the charge on the back of a Fiendish Tarrasque. Ha! Despite fun on the quick list my favourite entry here comes from the section of new creatures. The Putrescent Flow is scary and rather dim witted. It’s a huge ooze the unholy warrior can ride in, making use of a specially produced bubble from the ooze to avoid the creature’s digestion. The ooze isn’t so smart, might get excited and confused and forget to render the bubble area free of its digestive juices though. Oops.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a whole chapter devoted to the Fallen and Redeemded. You can’t be a Holy Warrior, enjoy the protection of powerful angels, and then become an Unholy Warrior and expect the forces of light to do nothing. If you were a powerful holy warrior when you Fall then the Angel of Retribution, Raguel, may come deal with you himself. The chapter talks about what sort of things a fallen holy warrior, now unholy warrior, who survives this might expect. If you had any choice at all in your Fall or the dark path you walked then there’s no chance for redemption but there are a minority for which is this is possible. This is a great aspect on the Holy and Unholy Warriors for the book talk about it. You could build an entire campaign out of this sort of thing.
The Unholy Warrior is good. Er, the book-buying sort of good. I love the way the Handbook straddles so many of Green Ronin’s products and does so without the reader needing to have any of them. The Unholy Warrior is one of those classes that seem to generate plot around them and the Handbook has ensured that the game mechanics are as slick and smooth as possible.
