Complete Guide to Treants

[Messageboard Golem]

What happens when a forest dies? Its treant swears vengeance. Learn about the dark side of treants: fury, hatred, revenge, and the charred, undead creatures left behind when a treant burns...

The Complete Guide to Treants is a stand-alone, world-neutral sourcebook covering everything you ever wanted to know about treants. It covers the traditional role of the treant as noble protector of the forest, but also examines the fate of those treants who turn to other means. It includes:

* Detailed background material on treants, including their various groves, the guild-like branches of the Vine of Tales, their cosmology, the deep treants of the underdark, and more.
* Stats and background on the dark side of treants: shadowed treants, who resort to great evils to protect their trees; forsaken treants, driven insane by the loss of their forest; the blasted, treants killed with fire then animated to walk again as undead; and more.
* Full stats for treants as a character race, including four new classes (Firesworn, Treeherd, Woodwarden, and Leafsinger).
* And, of course, new feats, spells, and other such things.

The Complete Guide to Treants is the sixth volume in the Complete Guide series. Each Complete Guide is exactly what it sounds like: a complete guide to playing a given kind of monster. As a GM, you'll learn how to run that monster, both in combat and role-playing situations. And since every Complete Guide includes guidelines on playing the monster as a character race, players have new options, too.

The Complete Guide to Treants can be inserted easily into any fantasy setting

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Complete Guide to Treants is a bit of a departure from the standard Complete Guides. While it’s not a 128-page tome like some of the Slayers Guides, it is greater than previous Complete Guides, weighing in at 48 pages with a matching price of $13, much closer to the competition that runs about $12.95.

Internal art is done by Tom Galambos and Thomas Denmark and is good. The layout is standard two-column with perhaps just a tad too much white space. Editing is good. Interior covers are not used. The OGL takes up a single page and the table of contents and credits takes up a single page.

So what does the Complete Guide to Treants bring to the game? While there is a bit of physiology and social structure, the majority of the book focuses on the crunchy stuff. For example, there are two ways to introduce treants as characters. The first is ala a standard treant, which would be an ECL of 11. First level character would be 12th level then. Not too good. However, you could start as a sapling. Now you’ll probably not advance too much in the Treant class as it takes years of time for physical growth that accompanies the levels, but you start off as a ECL +4 and can gain levels in other classes.

What about unique classes? Treants can belong to three different standard classes like Leafsingers, Treeherders and Woodwardens. These classes are very similar to bards, druids and rangers. One suggestion the book offers is that the classes are so similar because the druids taught the elves that taught the humans. An interesting concept, especially when one considers how old treants can be.

Another class presented isn’t quite so standard, the Firesworn. See, while the majority of the book focuses on crunch, there are bits and pieces of history, philosophy and other role-playing material in the book. The Firesworn are treants who’ve survived the death of their forest through fire and have almost been killed (brought to negative hit points) and now swear an oath to Fireheart, one of the main forces in their religion, to take vengeance. These creatures take this oath on a burning coal, which turns the hand into a spiky club that can burst into flames. They get fire resistance and other fire related powers as they gain levels but the most interesting thing is that they can be redeemed if they finish their revenge.

New Feats help flesh out treants abilities and make them a bit different than standard races. For instance, they don’t scribe scrolls, they craft magic seeds. They don’t necessarily make normal magic items, because they can make living magic items. In terms of combat, Giant’s Throw allows them to throw grabs characters while improved corrosion double triple damage to objects. Think that sword’s going to save you? Not in a thousand pieces its not.

A brief section on treant magic covers some examples of living items and magic seeds, but most will be interested in the new spells. My only disappointment here is that only treant levels are listed. It’d be interested to see what level Treeform, a variant of Flesh to Stone where the caster turns the victim into a tree, would be for a druid. How about Ironbark. Would this spell stack with Barkskin?

Those not satisfied with new classes, magic items and spells shouldn’t’ despair. They can always customize their treants with templates from appendix one. These included the undead blasted treant and hollow treant, as well as the deep treant, a being who thrives off moss and the lichens underground. Other templates like the forsaken allow the Gm to throw a mad treant at the party while the brambelshadow monsters are undead plants that are placed inside corpses and resemble the corpse they’ve grown out of.

While appendix two only has one new monster, it’s always interesting to see how evil plants can really be. The Eater-of-Souls is a moving tree that eats souls.

Now all of this information might be difficult to incorporate without those role playing notes and Joe Crow does an excellent job of providing a lot of sample NPCs and ideas to jump start any campaign. The forest Thronleaf is watched over by a treant of that name but this ancient being is worried about his friend Longbranch. That being, Longbranch, isn’t quite right in terms of his oneness with nature but like all treants, is a long-term planner and players may be unaware of anything wrong at all.

Those looking for something different may wish to have the players seek out the dark undead powers of the Cursed One, a Hollow Treant that acts as a mentor and guide to dark necromancers who form cults around the monster.

While the campaign notes for using treants as NPCs or PCs is only two pages long, coupled with the NPCs and setting notes, the GM should be able to run this material right out of the book either using the creatures as adversaries, allies, or neutral mentors who sit back and watch the world around them. For a change of pace, some GMs might have their players take the role of treants and deal with the so-called fire Starters and Axe Wielders.

While I’d have enjoyed more campaign notes and example maps of the locations mentioned, I’m quite pleased with the sheer amount of material in the book. The templates, classes, magic items and spells will all find a use in my campaign and that’s about as high a recommendation as you can get.

 

[GameWyrd]

As a rule I try not to check out what other reviewers are saying about a product before I’ve made my own mind up. I think it’s best to approach the book as neutrally as possible. This didn’t happen with The Complete Guide to Treants, people just kept on talking about it in the chatrooms or raving about it on forums. If I were to summarise the comments I’d picked up about the book before opening it myself then it would be as "Treants kick ass!"

They do, especially if you’ve been lighting fires in their forests.

It’s not the ass kicking that puts this book a notch above most of the other slim guide supplements though; it’s the meat around the crunchy bits. Quite a number companies produce slim guidebooks for d20 monsters but only a few go for broke with 128-paged guides. The Complete Guide to Treants steals first base by slyly pushing past the 32-page mark and reaching a count of 48 for only US $13.00. That doesn’t save it from staples but it does give it a competitive edge. These extra dozen pages are used wisely and in some ways it does seem to be the genuinely useful appendices that seal in the successes of the bulk of the book.

Don’t call them Ents. Treants were seen by many as the classic don’t sue us name dodge until Palladium’s Baal-Rog came along and people started getting antsy over the Tree + Giant = Treant equation. Nevertheless treants manage to ooze Tolkien flavour in a way Halflings never did. It’s impossible to read this Complete Guide without picking up vibes from the great work. Treants sometimes fall into Shadow. The forest under the aegis of a treant that’s fallen into shadow become dark and sinister places them selves. The woods get mirky. The fall into shadow usually begins as unwise or extreme measures taken to protect the forest, alliances with undead or the poisoning of manually dug wells. Focusing on the "greater good" is always a risk but it’s something that all the treants do. Treants are concerned first and foremost with the forests, as plants themselves this isn’t all that surprising. Treants see animals as part of the ecology process. Animals may spread pollen or trim back the growth of a too dominant plant species but to the treants they’re still only supplemental. Treants harbour special concern for the tool wielding races, the axe weilding races, and in fact this seems to have been embedded into the very core of treant culture. The book makes much of the treants’ impressive five thousand year lifespan and how that can outlast entire civilisations but whether by accident or design it seems clear to me who’s legacy is the longest lived.

Legacies. Relationships with other races. Other guidebooks sometimes try and get you interested in how races treat one another, or respond to threats or even how the race in question works through internal issues but these other guidebooks rarely succeed. This is especially true for those guides that have to work with less than a hundred pages. The Complete Guide to Treants is one of those rare successes; the flavour text engages you.

As far as I’m concerned it’s engaging flavour text that makes the crunchy bits interesting. There’s plenty of crunch to the treants. The introduction of treant character classes also introduces the tree giants as a possible player character race. The monster manual’s default treant enjoys a Challenge Rating of 8. The addition of classes on top of an EL 8 makes for a scary monster and, most likely, a game balance destroying PC. The solution to this beautiful and simple; the age of the treant makes a big difference. The monster manual treant is your average, mature but not ancient treant. A better choice for a player character might be a young treant, a sapling. You’ll find an age progression table that takes treants from 1 hit dice up to 20. Special abilities and attribute boosts kick in on this table just in the same way as character class abilities do. At Hit Dice 10, for example, the treant enjoys +4 Str and +4 Con. Progression up the Hit Dice Advancement table isn’t bought with XP but happens as the treants age. Since there’s winning and interesting culture text on how treants bring up their young and then the role of elders in society the information on how to age a treant is more than "just crunch".

There’s another good example of the winning combination in the character classes. Three of the classes; Leafsingers, Treeherds and Woodwardens look an awful like Bards, Druids and Rangers. A problem? It isn’t for me. Not only do these classes put the game mechanics together well there’s the suggestion that it was perhaps it was the treants who taught the elves these classes in the first place. It works. Rather than just crunchy-copycats these three classes retain their value as key roles in treant society. The Firesworn class, actually the first one the book introduces, is unlike anything else. Firesworn treants are those which have lost their forest homes and nearly been killed by fire. These fanatical treants are more likely to burn the axe-wielding races than be burnt by them. It’s the combination of advancement by age and by class that is responsible for the cries of "Treants kick ass!" Imagine a 20HD level 10 Woodwarn Treant with Favoured Enemy, Sneak Attack +3d6, Woodland Stride and a speed of 60ft. Scary.

There are new feats (always new feats) and a new angle on magic in the Complete Guide. Magic Seeds are effectively scrolls and living magic items are specially bred magic animals. The book gives some examples of the latter; Irontusk is a boar living magic item that has tusks that crackle with electric energy. There are a couple new treant useful spells too.

As noted the extra pages in the book are used well but there’s always going to be a limit. I think the campaign chapter could have been bigger. It quickly looks as treants as NPCs and then as PCs before winding down with some adventure hooks.

The appendices kick off where other Complete Guides would be drawing to a close. The first of the three sections introduce some excellent templates. The Blasted Treant were once slain by fire and now undead horrors. Templates are the way to go with additions like this because, thanks to this book, treants might be anything from a 1HD sapling to a 20HD ancient and may or may not have levels in a number of different classes. The Deep Treants are those that have evolved underground, away from the sunlight and even from trees. They’ve become fungi based instead. Forsaken Treants are those driven insane by the destruction of their forest whereas Hollow Treants are those that have succumb to the shadow and fallen into darkness. Two non-treant templates are the Brambleshadow creatures and Withered creatures. Withered creatures aren’t creatures at all, not really, they’re undead plants. Brambleshdows are also plants but plants grown from corpses and capable of forming into an effigy of the body they grew from. Appendix 2 is given over to the Eater-of-Souls – a wandering tree that, oh you guessed it, eats souls. The last few pages in the book are a collection of sample NPCs, their haunts and some plot hooks.

It’s rare that I’m so pleased with a slim guidebook but it’s also rare one is as successful as Goodman’s Complete Guide to Treants. Treants is good value for money, a good read and will provide both tempting ideas and useful game mechanics to your campaign.

* This The Complete Guide to Treants review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[John Cooper]

The Complete Guide to Treants
By Joe Crow
Goodman Games product number GMG3002
48 pages, $13.00

The Complete Guide to Treants is an earlier release in Goodman Games' "Complete Guide" series (in fact, it dates back to the 3.0 days), but I've only recently taken a look at them. (This is my second, after the recently-released Complete Guide to Rakshasas.) This book does a great job at examining the treant race, something that hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, ever really been done before. (I recall an "Ecology of the Treant" back in the AD&D 1st Edition days of Dragon Magazine, but I recall it as being rather unsatisfying and illogical - since when do treants lair in caves?)

Fortunately, The Complete Guide to Treants takes a hard look at these ambulatory plant creatures, and does so in a manner demonstrating quite a bit of thought behind them and a firm understanding of the d20 system.

The cover, by Thomas Denmark, is a dark piece (literally: it takes place at dusk) featuring a rampaging treant attacking a small farm. The color scheme is excellent, with muted browns lit by the burning fires in the treant's eyes and mouth, the fire it's started on the ground, and by the last remnants of daylight fading just over the tree line. Detail is pretty good - I like the treant's rough bark, and you can see the individual logs on the farmer's thatched roof dwelling - but Thomas seems to have a bit of trouble with his proportions. Now, I can hardly criticize the body proportions on a treant, whose build only approximates that of a human in the most general way, but when I can't tell which limbs are arms and which are legs, then there's a problem. (I think the biggest problem is that this treant seems to have five limbs, three of which look to be legs.) Also, the helpless woman gripped in its left hand has a torso that's way too long for the rest of her body (and the "hand" gripping her doesn't bend right, now that I look at it). All in all, this isn't a terrible piece, but it could have been much better. Again, though, bonus points for the artist using a concept from the book's interior: the flaming treant is a firesworn, a treant that survived the burning of its forest and now seeks vengeance on the race that destroyed its grove.

The interior art consists of 12 black-and-white illustrations by Thomas Denmark and Tom Galambos, plus a leaf-patterned border strip on the bottom of each page. The majority of these look to be pencil drawings (as opposed to inked works), and this allows for a much greater range of shading, a look that meshes very well with the mobile tree-men of the book. (One illustration, though, the subterranean "deep treant" on page 33, is perhaps a little too well shaded, as I can't tell what's what in the picture - it looks like a bunch of blobs of darkness, some rocks, some fungus-covered treant.) I really like the overall "look" of the treants in this book, though: they're a bit "stumpier" than I normally see treants depicted, with shorter legs and squatter bodies.

Sadly, both inside covers are blank, somewhat of a wasted opportunity in my mind.

The Complete Guide to Treants is laid out as follows:

• Introduction: a brief explanation of what this book is about, with the game stats for a treant from the 3.0 Monster Manual for reference
• Physiology: a discussion of the treant's physical makeup, and a brief description of the three types of treant (the standard one is oaklike, while there are also pine tree and willow tree variants)
• Social Structure: examining the treant's mostly solitary existence and relationships with forest animals in its territory, treant groves, and a unique communication system wherein gossip and discourse is passed on via forest animals bearing specialized pollens
• Cultural Habits: the fact that treants consider themselves the oldest of all sentient races (which makes sense), a treant's daily cycle and life cycle, relationships with other intelligent races, treant cosmology and philosophy, and a one-page boxed text on shadowed treants, those who slowly turn to evil ways
• Combat Strategies: sections on general tactics, terrain, threats and responses, and fighting against treants
• Characters: treant PCs (at 2 different age levels: the standard adult treant and the "sapling," with racial traits of each of the three racial variants), the firesworn, leafsinger, treeherd, and woodwarden treant classes, and 7 new feats
• Treant Magic: magic seeds, living magic items, and five new spells
• Campaigns: treants as NPCs and as PCs, 13 adventure hooks, and a sample treant NPC, "Thornleaf"
• Appendix 1 - New Templates: the blasted treant (undead, slain by fire), deep treant (underground treant with symbiotic fungus coating its bark), forsaken treant (those driven insane by the destruction of their forest), and hollow treant (undead treants who turned to evil while still living), each with a sample NPC, plus two new non-treant templates: the brambleshadow (a plant creature of roughly the same size and shape of the original animal from whose corpse it sprung) and the withered creature (an undead plant)
• Appendix 2 - New Monsters: monster, really, as there's only one - the eater-of-souls, a mobile tree that drains life energy from intelligent beings
• Appendix 3 - Sample NPCs: Longbranch's Grove and the Curse of Bonewood, each with a fully-statted treant with class levels, a description of the treant's grove, and several adventure hooks

I was very impressed with the editing and proofreading jobs in this book; despite a small handful of errors noted, this is the second Goodman Games book I've seen (and I've only seen two to date) where I was impressed with the overall quality of the editing job. The author, Joe Crow, has an easy-to-follow writing style and uses wonderful imagery while getting into the treant's heads; I especially like the way he throws out phrases like "the mayfly races" without any further explanation, but which so accurately describe what a millennia-old treant would think of the humanoid races whose lifespans are only measured in centuries, or even worse yet mere decades. (Other disparaging terms include "axe wielders" and "fire-starters.")

So much of The Complete Guide to Treants makes perfect sense: that the three main treant classes (leafsinger, treeherd, and woodwarden) were the progenitors of the bard, druid, and ranger classes that were originally taught to the elves (and who, in turn, passed them on to the other humanoid races); that the simple, two-deity treant cosmology, consisting of Fireheart (the Sun) and Worldtree (the Earth), is all the treants need to explain their beliefs; even the sole new monster (as opposed to template) appearing in this book is perfectly explained as a by-product of the treant's animate trees ability, and in turn explains why treants don't go animating trees just on a whim. Joe has certainly done a lot of thinking about these tree-men, and the result is a load of treant lore that all fits together very nicely.

On the down side, there was quite a bit of wasted space in this book. While I was glad to see that whoever was in charge of the book's layout didn't feel constrained to make each new chapter start on a new page (instead putting the new chapter heading horizontally across both columns of the page, wherever it happened to fall), there were quite a few pages - seven, actually - where there was a significant amount of white space. This is apparently an accepted practice in PDFs (from what I've seen), but in a printed product it's much less forgivable.

If I could have made one change to the book, I would have liked to have learned more about the "pine" and "willow" treant subraces; while they're mentioned briefly on page 3, and the game stats for PCs of these subraces are provided on page 15, not much else is really said about them, and the core of the book is devoted to the "standard" treant, those predominantly oak-based.

Still, that's really the worst that can be said about this book, and for all of the great stuff you get - classes, variant races, templates for treants and other creatures, spells, feats, logical justification for all of the above, and more treant NPCs than you can shake a stick at - The Complete Guide to Treants is really the ultimate work on the subject of treants. If I can be excused for using the oft-hated "crunch" and "fluff" terms, while The Complete Guide to Treants has some excellent "crunch" - quite a bit of it, in fact, more than you'll find in most similarly-sized books on a specific monster race - it's the "fluff" that helps make the "crunch" so good. Despite it being a 3.0 book, I can highly recommend it for anyone seeking to use treants in their 3.0 or 3.5 D&D campaigns. For that matter, I'm sure the backgrounds and campaign material on the treant race could easily be used in just about any fantasy campaign, no matter what rules set you're using.

The Complete Guide to Treants rates a "5 (Superb)" from me. I'll definitely be checking out others in the "Complete Guide" series.