Egyptian Gods

[Ghostwind]

The Egyptian gods have long been the subject of numerous books and even greater legends. They are perhaps some of the oldest and best-documented gods known to modern man with treatises dating back to the days of pre-Christianity. The Egyptian lands are filled with all manner of lore and superstition regarding the favor and wrath of the gods. Now these gods have been translated into gaming terms to enhance your campaign and provide new elements to incorporate into your world with five new prestige classes, new domains, spells, magical artifacts, and new monsters.

Third in the continuing Lore of the Gods series, this download follows on the heels of the highly acclaimed Norse Gods (a free download) and the first book in the series, Greek Gods. Be sure to check out our message boards for added material that ties into these books.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer, d20 Magazine Rack

Egyptian Gods is the third in a series from Bastion Press detailing mythological figures in d20 format for use with the Dungeons & Dragons® role-playing game produced by Wizards of the Coast. It is written by Steve Creech and Kevin Ruesch. It should, more appropriately be called The Lore of the Gods, Book Three: The Egyptians, but what the hey?

In format, this effort differs little from their previous releases, The Lore of the Gods, Book One: The Olympians (and see my above review of such for further details) and The Lore of the Gods, Book Two: The Asgardians (also known as Norse Gods). The listing for each deity includes the standard information: alignment, domains, symbol, and favored weapon, but there are also a few new entries that I find add a new dimension to the game. For example, under Bast, we learn that her favored classes are clerics, monks, and paladins. Favored classes who worship Bast gain a +1 bonus to their base Dexterity scores. The exact benefits of being a favored class vary from deity to deity, but it makes each deity-character relationship unique.

This information is followed by a brief background of the deity and then a stat block with the standard write-up for the deity's avatar. This book does not draw upon the material in Deities & Demigods because it does not try to design the actual deity (which is, and should be, immortal and nearly omnipotent), but rather the being's physical form or avatar. As previously, all are limited to 20 character levels, making them powerful, but still subject to the core rules (the Epic Level Handbook is not yet covered under OGL). As in the first book, artifacts typically used by the deity are detailed following the stat-block.

The artwork in this book is done by Todd Morasch and Michael Nickovicch and you can see a sampling of their work in the free PDF download of Norse Gods. While I feel that the effort put into this technique is admirable, I just don’t like the look of the pictures. I found myself thinking, "I could do that with Photoshop." It always been my understanding that the Eqyptian gods were represented by anthropomorphic animals and this is the way I expected them to be depicted. Some are and some aren't and this is a minor nitpick, but it means something to me.

The special effects used on some of the pictures also strike a sour chord with me. Again, it looks almost as though Nickovicch opened up Photoshop, went to the filters menu, and experimented. After seeing Aaron Siddal's beautiful artwork in The Olympians, I was just left disappointed by this effort. That said, it's not all bad, though. I found the picture of Thoth, for example, to be very well-done and compelling. Exactly what I would have expected from the god of knowledge (even though he has a human head).

Following the write-ups of the 17 gods (do I sense a pattern forming here?) are a handful of new domains: Affinity, Balance, Dead, Desert, Heaven, Moon, Music, Night, Time, Underworld, Weather, and Wind. Some new spells (42 in all) round out the new offerings that can be easily transported to any game setting. We're also given quite a few new monsters, some copied from other Bastion Press products, but several brand new to this work. They fit the theme of the supplement perfectly and even DMs who aren’t using the Egyptian setting specifically will no doubt find a use for them in their campaigns. A few magical items unique to an Egyptian milieu can also be found here.

The prestige class section was what offered me my most pleasant surprise. I'm an old fan of Marvel comics and my heart leapt with joy when I saw the prestige class labeled Moon Knight! Yes, they are followers of Khonsu and I don't know if the nod was intentional, but it is certainly appreciated! There are a total of 5 new prestige classes in this offering.

As with all Bastion Press Products I've reviewed thus far, everything in here is designated as Open Game Content except the artwork. Their compliance with the d20 standard is spot on, rivaling that of Wizards themselves. As with The Olympians, I deduct a few points from originality because the material is so well covered (everybody does the Egyptian mythos), but I give a few back for the gods they chose to do (and the Moon Knight prestige class).

There's no doubt that the material is useful even to DMs running games set outside the Egyptian arena, but since it does concentrate on a very specific milieu, I felt compelled to cut back the Playability rating a little. If the artwork hadn't struck me as just so, well, messy, I'd up the Value for the Dollar to 5. In any case, you can't go wrong adding this one to your collection.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I rate this product at poor because I found it only mildly useful. The gods themselves do not fit into a cohesive whole, so running a campaign with the pantheon provided is not very doable. In addition, half of the pagecount of the product is taken up by huge stat blocks for avatars of the gods. So, right off the bat, half of the product is useless for me. The other half was only mildly useful, keeping the product from getting a dubious 1 star.

The useful part of this e-book is the divine magic portion. They have some new domains and new spells for those domains. These are themed more for a middle-eastern or Egyptian game and I am including a couple of these domains and spells in my game. The artwork was passable and consists of digitized art of co-workers and friends of the makers of the e-book transformed to egyptian gods and mythological creatures. The border art of the product is a little too busy.

Recommendation: Buy something else. Dieties and Demigods or somesuch.

 

[Psion]

I really think you need more detail. Please revise it. Consult the HELP/FAQ link at the left for more info.

 

[Voadam]

Egyptian Gods is the third in the three part Lore of the Gods series of PDF sourcebooks by Bastion Press providing 3.0 d20 translations of real world ancient mythologies. It provides mechanical material for both players and DMs. Players have a slew of gods with defined domains, a mechanical worshipper benefit, new domains, spells, and prestige classes. DMs have full stat blocks for divine avatars, new artifacts, and Egyptian themed monsters. While real legends of the gods are used as references, the mechanical material is designed to fit into a d20 D&D world instead of exactly mimicking the mythology.

The gods are presented with divine listings, avatar stat blocks, and a few paragraphs of description and history. Almost every god includes both a nature and a funerary/afterlife aspect of their divine portfolio as well as animal headed depictions. Most major gods are presented, with only Ptah and Maat being conspicuously absent. Even the moon god Khonshu known from the old Marvel comic series Moon Knight makes an appearance. The most developed back-story of the gods in the book is the Osiris-Set-Isis-Horus story arc of murder, vengeance, and resurrection. Set is interesting because he is not only presented as a nemesis deity, but also as a non-evil patron of desert peoples. The book does not present an Egyptian mythology or complete cosmology, but makes references to them in describing the individual gods.

The divine listings include alignment, allies, favored animals, classes, and weapons and a minor benefit for favored classes. These worshipper benefits range from a +1 bonus to an ability score to bonuses on certain skill or attack rolls. This is unbalancing and class and worship forcing as the benefits only accrue to worshippers who are also in the favored classes, but this is generally a modest power and can work fine for campaigns where DMs want divine favor to make a character slightly better than the norm.

The avatar concept posits that gods can project thought images of themselves to interact with the mortal world. These projected avatars take the form of 20th level characters with maximum hit points, all 18 starting abilities, lots of magic items, including weapons beyond the mortal +10 limit, and a unique artifact. They are also immune to drains, mind-affecting abilities, poisons, and a few other attack forms. In addition they automatically know every spell on their spell lists. Despite these hefty abilities they are still rated as CR 20 just as any normal 20th level character would be.

The authors point out that the given forms and class choices of the gods are but one example of the forms the avatars can make. Interestingly some of the avatars are not presented as human, but as elven, dwarven, or even lizardfolk in the case of Sobek the crocodile god. Being d20 the stat blocks for high level characters are quite long even though they skip the divine immunities spelled out in the introduction.

The only art in the book appears in the deity section. Following in the footsteps of Norse Gods, the second book in the series, the art consists of photoshop altered photographs of models. For Egyptian Gods this mostly consists of lightly clad deities including a topless Bast, with many displaying pasted on animal heads. The feel for the art seems in sync with the pantheon's genre, unlike the less than Viking specimens seen in Norse Gods. It is too bad the art does not cover every deity or any of the monsters presented later in the book. The lack of art in the monster section is particularly odd as some were taken directly from Bastion's fully illustrated Minions books.

After the god listings 12 new domains are presented, some being carry overs from the prior Lore of the Gods books. Unfortunately this leads to some mismatch in domains to gods. For example, the underworld domain that worked for Hades or Hel in the Greek and Norse pantheons respectively provides a list of evil spells designed to smite good characters seems out of place for Osiris the good god of the underworld. Similarly the weather domain provides a number of cold based spells that are out of place being offered by an Egyptian god. Each domain states which god offers the domain which is a nice reference point for a d20 pantheon book.

The spell lists for the new spells are a much needed addition to the series as they were noticeably absent from the other two books. 43 spells are presented as general knowledge with many carried over from the prior two books as well as two from Bation's Spells and Magic. New ones of note include silverkiss, a 1st level spell that temporarily infuses weapons with a coating of silver, and a number of time related spells. The second level temporal bolts launches up to five orbs of accelerated time that cause damage through causing time stress on the body, a neat concept, but the uncapped 2d4 +1/level damage per bolt is too much for a second level spell. The sixth level version also affects spell durations, and there are even time travel spells with an appropriately harsh xp requirement.

Eleven Egyptian themed monsters present big and small terrors, including four from the Minions books. There are two unique mythological creatures, the Sphinx of Giza and Sekhmet and a number of undead, a funerary guardian construct, a nasty vermin, a sand elemental, and even a scorpion centauroid race. Sekhmet has a really cool creation story of Ra being angry at the babbling noise of mortals plucked out his eye and hurled it at the world as a burning fireball that turned into the flying lion Sekhmet who would have killed all of humanity unless Ra had relented. Also the 1 hit point fleshbane beetles are a nod to the movie The Mummy as they burrow into a victim's heart one round after successfully biting. Unfortunately monster power mechanics are not always clear and some of the stat blocks (such as Sekhmet’s attacks) seem a little off.

There are Eqyptian artifacts and new magic items as well, such as hand phylacteries that work like wands but cost 1.5 times as much and keep the hands free for holding spell components or other items.

Finally, there are five prestige classes:
Medjay five-level desert mercenaries with terrain abilities and bonus feats
Moon Knight ten-level vigilantes with bonus feats and darkness powers
Setite Keepers of Lore five-level desert loremasters with 2/5 spell casting
Sisters of Selket five-level female devotees of the scorpion goddess
Tombmason ten-level architects and tomb raiders, better than an expert but not as good as a rogue.

The sisters class is missing the progression chart and a full entry on the goddess, both would be useful in using the class. The tombmasons would make a neat NPC, perhaps a rival to a party rogue, or perhaps a good class to use in a low power hero setting such as a pulp genre or the horror of Call of Cthulhu d20.

Overall, Eqyptian Gods presents a useable version of d20 god interactions with avatars and divine benefits as well as providing standard player goodies such as new domains and spells and DM material including new Eqyptian themed items, monsters and some tastes of the Egyptian mythology.