The Slayers Guide to Sahuagin

[Messageboard Golem]

For those that live far from the sea the sahuagin are unknowable creatures of the deep, used by parents as bedtime cautions to wilful children. Or perhaps they are told of around the campfires by adventurers, their tongues and imaginations loosened by mead, in electrifying deeds of bravado. These deeds are the product of an alert mind and an ear for a good story, for few away from the gentle lapping of the briny sea have ever met, let alone bested, the sahuagin and lived to tell such a rollicking tale.

 

[Psion]

Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin

The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin is the latest in Mongoose's Slayer's Guide series which attempt to give more detailed treatment to a variety of d20 system creatures. Prior titles have addressed hobgoblins, gnolls, centaurs, and amazons. This volume takes a look at the sahuagin, a violent aquatic species.

Those who follow my reviews will recall that I wasn't too kind to earlier titles in this series. But perhaps it's a good time to see how the series is shaping up.

A First Look

The Slayer's Guide to Sahaugin is a 32 page staple-bound softcover book. The book is priced as $9.95 US. This is somewhat expensive for books of this size.

The cover is done in a similar style to previous books in the series: a color illustration of the creature covered with a stylized gray border. The cover picture depicts two fishlike humanoids (one prominent, one in the background) wielding weapons, swimming in an aquatic environment.

The interior is black and white. The layout is similar to the previous slayer guides, with an average size typeface and large header font, but there are fewer section breaks.

The art is a significant improvement over the early slayer's guides. Chris Quilliams (the standout artist from the earlier Slayer's Guides) provides an excellent anatomy illustration in the inside cover. He is joined by a variety of other artists, including the excellent Danillo Moretti, who does much of the interior art. Danillo did much of the work in Mongoose's Travellers Tales series. Moretti has a crisp, appealing style much like that of popular CCG artist Quinton Hoover.

A Deeper Look

The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin is divided into a number of categorical sections dealing with physiology, habitat, society, methods of warfare, role-playing, adventure ideas, a sample sahuagin village, and a section full of "stock" sahuagin NPCs. Pretty much the first half of the book is expositional in nature. The last half of the book is more mechanical in nature. I found this to be a better balance than previous Slayer's Guides.

The section on physiology discusses such things as how a sahuagin swims and breathes, their languages, their senses, and adaptations. Most of this section is exposition, but there are a few mechanical sidebars that give variants that might arise as consequences of the content of the exposition. For example, there are brief rules of sahuagin smelling blood in the water, and entering a barbarian rage-like state if injured in the water.

The section on habitat breifly discusses the nature of sahuagin settlements. Being social creatures, the coalesce into extended kingdoms. The section also postulates some history of sahuagin as they exist in a fantasy world.

The section on sahuagin society postulates that religion is a central element of their society. The sahuagin religion consists of three primal god-figures, It That Is Eaten, He Who Eats, and She That Teaches. Under sahuagin theology, certain creatures exist to be eaten, and others to eat. When It That Is Eaten was torn asunder when it had conflicting desires about the natural order, land and sky were created. Thus by sahuagin theology, those on dry land defy the natural order as part of the rebellious aspect of It That Is Eaten.

In sahuagin society, females are largely priestesses and males are largely warriors and leaders. As with many evil races, advancement through the ranks occurs largely by combat.

This section introduces a number of new rules items. Straightforward guidelines are provided for adding sahuagin nations to your game. There are domains for the sahuagin deities and two new spells, natural presence (calms prey creatures so they cannot react to the sahuagin until the sahuagin attacks) and threshing (sends stunning waves through the water). There are two new short (5-level) prestige classes, royal guard and high priestess, and two new feats, leaping attack and resist drying.

The Methods of Warfare section discusses the combat tactics and methods that the sahuagin use. This includes the weapons they normally use (such as trident and net) and how different size units act to defeat an enemy. Finally, there are methods for effectively fighting sahuagin; their eyes are poorly adapted to light and they are adversely affected by fresh water.

The Role-Playing with Sahuagin is somewhat mislabeled. It does discuss what motivates sahuagin. However, the upshot is that their most important priority is destruction of land life. This explains well their motivations and likely actions, but leaves little room for peaceful interaction with sahuagin. This seems somewhat a shame to me, and very much taking the easy way out. It seems like they could have come up with some small wrinkle in their philosophy that enterprising players could exploit to relate to them with means other than weapons.

The Scenario Hooks and Ideas, Sahuagin Village, and Sahuagin Reference List sections should give GMs the raw material they need to get a campaign against the sahuagin rolling. They provides some adventure ideas to get players involved, a sample sahuagin village, and a number of NPCs for use against the players.

Two specific leaders (the ranger Big-fella-bloody-spear and the priestess Talking-talking-talk-to Gods) are provided in the village section, and NPCs in the reference list section are more general, from a 10th level ranger sahuagin prince, all the way down to lowly sahuagin young. The statistics are generally solid, unlike those in some earlier Slayer's Guides. However, I did find some selections unlikely. For example, why would an evil cleric ever prepare an inflict wounds spell when they can use them spontaneously? That is a relatively minor quibble, though.

Conclusion

Overall, I thought this was a much better book than the earlier Slayer's Guides. It had a better balance of exposition to rules, making it a much more practical book, and the production values have improved markedly. The rules material is solid and would be useful in any campaign involving sahuagin.

I was a little disappointed in one aspect. Despite the fact the book gives the reader a little deeper insight into sahuagin, they still cannot effectively be reasoned with and are primarily foes to be met in combat, which makes some of the exposition seem a little wasteful.

That said, I can definitely see a role for this book and other Slayer's Guides the way that they are developing. Often when I buy adventures, I end up deciding that the plot as presented will not work in my game, and I end up gutting it for the usable material (rules, stats, maps, and ideas). This book gives you all of that stuff in raw form, giving you all the material you need to "roll your own" adventure involving sahuagin that fits your own game.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[DM_Jeff]

The Slayer's Guide to Sahaugin is the latest in the Slayers Series of guides to all things monstrous in d20 fantasy roleplaying.

The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin
By Andrew Boswell
Cover art by Ralph Horsley
$9.95 each, 32-page sourcebook
ISBN: 1-903980-14-3

Introduction: The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin follows a long stream of slayer's guides from the prolific folks at Mongoose who have delivered a number of quality game items for 3rd edition fantasy. Slayer's guides take an often overlooked monster or race and detail it to expand a campaign, help build more living, exciting encounters and provide DM's with information to make the players sit up and take notice.

Review: The Guide to Sahuagin has a dark and dangerous cover painting depicting two of the sea devils closing, a great view of their form. Interior art is all black and white and is fairly consistent. It's all good, with many pieces being very good. Following the familiar Mongoose layout, borders are attractive and fair, and text density is very good. Layout and design are excellent, with sections, headers and rules clearly identified at a glance. Editing appears flawless.

The book begins with an introduction to the undersea foes, and sets the tone for the information to be had inside. While many Mongoose books have boxed shaded short fiction detailing the subject from the point of view of various fantasy persona. This book offers the same, but it's all from the point of view of a single adventurer with lots of experience with sahuagin. This helps give the book a focused feel when reading.

First up is a good look at sahuagin physiology including their language and body movement and senses. While sahuagin have a language that could be described like a dolphin's, it's unique in it's own, and is often accented by subtle body movement. We get a good look at the sahuagin putting their natural skills to use in a discussion of their stalking and striking techniques. This is also where we learn of the ancient curve-balls that nature throws these people: the mystery of a very small percentage of sahuagin eggs hatching like a sea-elf if within 100 miles of a sea-elf community, and the mutated mighty four-armed sahuagin!

Next is a look at the undersea habitat and society structure of this fishfolk. A very helpful sidebar helps DM's writing their campaign figure where to place provinces and kingdoms of the sahuagin on their maps and how to populate them. Sahuagin, as is known to many old-schooler are a lawful evil, tight-society of evil raiders and killers from the deep. This book dives into that exploring their hierarchy, rites of ascention in the pecking order and that which guides all sahuagin: their religion. To sum up, the religion consists of a tri of gods known as It That Is Eaten, She Who Teaches, and He Who Eats. And from this we learn about the race's myth of creation, the hatred against surface dwellers, why and how the females of the society are the teachers and priestesses of the race, and that the strength of warriors proves one superior in all terms.

Each of the gods grant listed domains to the priestesses and two new spells are detailed: Natural Presence (allowing sahaugin to swim among other life forms but calming them at the same time) and Threshing, a spell to confuse opponents in underwater combat. After this is a discussion of priestess in society and their relation in order with the King.

Two specific prestige classes for sahuagin are presented, the Royal Guard (mighty warriors of the sovereignty) and the Royal High Priestess, most potent cleric of the sahuagin race. Each details five levels of special powers and abilities unique to these professions among the sahuagin.

The book gives full details on their methods of warfare answering the who, what, why and how's they employ in their raids, reasons for combat, and methods of attack. This segues easily into the next section on roleplaying sahuagin, because there isn't too much to note: these evil folk are unwilling to negotiate any terms, and they can't be bribed or cajoled into mercy. This is also the section with the only piece of artwork that, while good, is not consistent with the others in terms of how these creatures look.

It's also neat to note an ongoing theme within the text reasoning the sahuagin's actions and their ties to their religion. That while the sahuagin may be evil within game definitions, they clearly see themselves as good and all surface-dwellers as evil.

As with other guides, they don't leave you with cool toys and no place to play, there are 4 well-thought out adventure scenario hooks and a full village complete with sahuahin character stats and descriptions. Rounding out the book are a collection of sahuagin game stats to help the DM prepare scenarios with different sahuagin with different class levels and the roles they serves the society, enabling you to populate en entire village hierarchy with what's provided. The d20 work is detailed and in good working order.

Conclusion: The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin is a very useful resource to any DM looking to expand her waterborne or shoreline campaign. While the page count is the same as others in the series, this comes off as meatier, more info, and more immediately applicable game rules. It meets the criteria set in this introduction with flying colors and any maritime (or coastal) campaign would do well to keep this in the DM's arsenal. Well done!

-Jeff Ibach

 

[Grompi]

Ach!

The rules are nay solid, me friend. The PrCs have design flaws (saving throw progression is blatantly wrong, powers are duds, and etc.). The suggestions for using the sahuagin vary from shallow to goofy (torch light scares them and a bucket of fresh water is "repellant"). The spell Natural Presence affects an area, yet has no area listed in its statistics while Threshing creates a cone 75 ft. long but 200 ft. wide for a high level caster. Ill-conceived. As an example of feat problems, Leaping Attack has no consideration for other feats like it (Spring Attack), nor is it related to the Jump skill.

Add to this poor writing (constant future tense, and more), weird liberties taken with the MM abilities and statistics (Blood Frenzy and "Smelt"), little real depth added to the sahuagin at all, and misleading back cover information. Where exactly is the "complete" village, cuz it ain't in my book).

Do nay buy this! 1/5

 

[Khur]

The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin is my first foray into the Slayer's Guide series by Mongoose Publishing. For those not in the know, each Slayer's Guide is devoted to a single (oft underutilized or overlooked) monstrous entity, and supposedly expands on the material presented in the Monster Manual. As presented in that core rulebook, sahuagin are interesting, formidable, and scary. The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin doesn't change that, but it doesn't add much either.

What attracted me immediately to this work was the fine image on the cover. That, and I must admit I like Mongoose's logo for the Slayer's Guide series. The inside cover is just a nice, and most of the art within the Guide is high quality. The graphic presentation of the text is average for the industry, with only the tasteless application of pointless page borders to bring it down from that position. Art and presentation are really secondary concerns to me as a gamer as long as they don't hinder readability; it's the content that matters.

Unfortunately, the prose is slapdash, cobbled together in a breezy way that overuses imprecise pronouns, confusing the subject of some sentences. A quote from the Guide, "Sharks are strangely docile in their presence, and they accompany them on hunting raids," shows what I mean. Annoying uses of future tense, senseless repetition, and weak modifiers are rife in the exposition, as well as widespread lack of proper punctuation. Further, the book is strangely organized, such as listing sahuagin treasure collecting and crafting habits under "Habitat", and a description of the sea-elf-like malenti under a section called "Stalking", while other sahuagin mutants are described two pages later, after text on sahuagin blood frenzy. Boswell also contradicts himself at least once, when saying in one place that sahuagin villages are never found deeper than 400 feet in one place, that they are found 200 to 1000 feet down in another, and typically around 500 feet in another.

Additional problems are less important to the book's usefulness, but noticeable. The use of the term "Games Master" to refer to the DM is bothersome, unnecessary under the d20 license, and unconventional even outside the d20 arena where the term is Game Master, or simply GM. Boswell refers to baby sahuagin as smelt, which are a specific type of small, silvery fish in the real world (not baby fish, which are called fry; baby sharks are called pups). A similarly poor choice of wording was naming female sahuagin "cows", leading to an entire section being humorously dubbed "Cult of the Cows".

Don't worry; Boswell's sea devils worship neither bovines, nor mammals of any kind. They don't worship their females either, but the females are priestesses. Religion is the "cornerstone" of sahuagin society, however, and it's here that one of the book's extrapolations from the MM works. The sahuagin of this Slayer's Guide worship a trinity of deities that make an alien, yet familiar, worldview. The creation myth is particularly inspired. I wondered, though, at the animal associated with the first of the sea devil deities born to the world, because of its clearly predatory nature, but subsequent association with prey.

The overview of sahuagin religion, and belief in "eat or be eaten", as well as the belief that the world above the waves is alien and evil, presents vast potential for creating a unique breed of monster. (Though one wonders why the sahuagin eat surface dwellers, if they're "demons".) Couple this with the rigidly lawful sahuagin described in the MM, and you've got a grand subject for writing. The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin missed the proverbial boat though, because the author seems to have a limited concept of what lawful means, and deviates form stated facts in Wizards' creature guidebook in weird ways. To quote the MM, "Every member of a sahuagin community knows its place well-and remains there." Not so with the Guide sahuagin, they fight amongst themselves, from birth on, to determine dominance and social rank. The author, of course, is within rights to depart from forerunning information on the subject, but the behavior is a chaotic tendency, even if ritualized (as the drow show clearly).

Where the book could have detailed society, it lazily meanders through shallow rehashes of already existing material. Where it could have given compelling reasons and solid facts about sahuagin life and biology, the Guide says little more than what's already been said (and cops out by stating the Guide is not an academic treatise). The sum of the additions and alterations to the sahuagin (from what is presented in the MM) goes unnoted in the statistics section of the book (like the ability to smell blood, or darkvision-like night sight listed in the "Sensing" section). Further, some add-ons seem contrived, like adding Will saving throws with variable DCs to resist the natural sahuagin blood frenzy (noting that the MM states the sahuagin can frenzy-a choice, not a foregone conclusion). Others are plain ludicrous, like sahuagin fleeing if doused with a bucket of fresh water (referring to freshwater sensitivity), or faced with the "bright light" of a torch or lantern (referring to light blindness). These sahuagin also have 1 HD fighting young that are superior to the average mortal, not the +100% noncombatants listed in the MM.

The new game bits of the book are hardly more useful. The prestige classes are poorly rendered, have a strange requirement (due to the fact that the required skill is cross-class for almost every NPC who would take the prestige classes), and do not follow [D&D class conventions (such as in saving throw progression). Most of the class abilities are too powerful (like the High Priestess' frenzy ability that makes her more potent than almost any other sahuagin, not counting her spells), and those that aren't are generic or only apply easily if the DM uses the altered abilities that appear in the book. The feats and new spells are lackluster, poorly written, and one (Leaping Attack) fails to use similar abilities, like Spring Attack and the Jump skill, as points of reference for its benefits. Finally, the reference list of various sahuagin at the back of the book is handy, but leaves out many things I'd want, like the average sahuagin priestess. It also has mistakes that limit its usefulness, like a mysterious sneak attack listed in the royal guard's feats, or the 1 HD "smelt" listed at 2 HD with 11 hit points.

The back of the book claims that the Guide contains a complete sea devil lair-a village of sahuagin that's part of an immense kingdom. This statement is misleading enough to be called a lie. No more than a page is dedicated to the village specifically, but mixed with generic village information, the section it's in takes three. There is nothing that remotely passes for a practical map of the place. The description of the village is ephemeral, there's no stat-block for it, and only two of the settlements NPCs are detailed in any way (and the baron is weaker than an "average" one in the reference list).

Shining like tiny gems in the mud are a few morsels of valuable and out-of-the-ordinary material. I already mentioned the creation myth and religion, but priestesses can acquire an unusual song ability that allows long-distance communication underwater; it's unique, original, and functional. Tidbits on constructing a sahuagin kingdom, and a few passages of the sea devils' warfare tactics are superior too. The scenario ideas section of the book is the real winner, with four ideas that can be incorporated into a sea-faring campaign as one-offs, or a string of adventures. One of these features a great idea to use the malenti in a mini-campaign.

Sadly, the admirable parts are far outweighed by the inferior ones. Even if the writing were sound, this 32-page book is little better than a hidebound rework of what's already out there, and the narratives it includes don't make up for this. Since this is my first reading of any of the Slayer's Guides, I'm now wary about the whole series. Ecologies found in Dragon magazine usually have more interesting things to say, in less space, and for much less money. To me The Slayer's Guide to Sahuagin was an opportunity to take a great monster (seemingly based on the Cthulhu mythos' deep ones), and give them life. It fails.

Make up your own sahuagin, and reward yourself with the $10 you saved.

(1.75, D-)

This review was originally written for Gaming Frontiers on 10/12/02.