11/20/2024

I bought a copy of the Player Companion for Shadowdark from DrveThruRPG. It is written by Greg Christopher. I love Shadowdark and wanted to see what others have brought to this game. New options can help so multiple characters don’t feel the same. Variety is the spice of life.

I like the art in the book and find that it fits in with the feel of Shadowdark. Nice job by the creator and artists!

I will review the ancestries in this post and the backgrounds and classes in later posts.

There are 24 ancestries listed in the Player Companion. Here is a list of the included ancestries:

• Changeling
• Dark Elf
• Deep Dwarf
• Deep Gnome
• Dragonborn
• Forest Gnome
• Goblin
• Gold Dwarf
• Gold Elf
• Gray Elf
• Gray Orc
• Hawkfolk
• Hill Dwarf
• Hobgoblin
• Human
• Kobold
• Lizardfolk
• Mountain Dwarf
• Mountain Orc
• Proudfoot Halfling
• Rock Gnome
• Snow Elf
• Stoutheart Halfling
• Wood Elf

While the goblin and human ancestries make it from the core rules, most of the ancestries are the demihuman subraces from various editions of Dungeons and Dragons like the mountain dwarf and wood elf. There are some new ancestries like the Changling and the Hawkfolk.

My opinion:

First off, I don’t like evil ancestries being available for player characters. There is no need for deep elf, deep dwarf, and deep gnome characters. Those ancestries have darkvision when used as a monster but don’t if a PC character. That doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t like the inclusion of the hobgoblin or the orcs either. I don’t even care for the goblin in the core rules.

Some traits that are part of the ancestries are overpowered and some take agency away from the GM:

• The wood elves get advantage when making attacks with a bow. That is huge! A wood elf fighter with an 18+ DEX and a longbow (selected for Weapon Mastery) would hit an AC 12 enemy 91% of the time. A +1 to ranged attacks with bows would have been more in line with the rest of the game mechanics.
• Dark Elves impose disadvantage on all spell checks against them. This is really bad because a failed spell is forgotten until rest. A critically failed spell check is a mishap.
• Mountain dwarves are immune to all poisons. That makes a lot of poison traps useless against a dwarf thief.
• Dragonborn only speak the Reptilian language and avoid others. Why would one be part of the group? Who can talk to it?
• Gold dwarves get a 10% discount on all purchases and 10% bonus when selling items. The party would always just have the dwarf buy everything so now it is a party discount. What if the locals don’t like dwarves? You can’t take it away as GM otherwise it looks like you are penalizing that player’s choice even if it violates the narrative story.
• Hobgoblins (which I already didn’t like) can use any armor and weapon no matter their class. Why not take a spellcaster class and have access to spells. Fail a spell? No problem, you are wearing plate mail with a sword and shield. You are now a fighter until you get your spells back.
• Hawkfolk can float about two feet off the ground and move up to a near distance. Once performed, they cannot use this ability again until resting. So they don’t fly? How do they hover 2 ft above the ground?

Conclusion: I am not that impressed with the ancestries included in the book. It appears the author wanted to add variety to the game (which is usually a good thing) but ended up with a mess.

Some of the ancestries overpower the rest and could make the other players feel like their characters aren’t needed. Some ancestries add extra inventory slots that take away the resource management aspect of the game.

What do you think of my take on the book’s ancestries? Leave a comment!

Keep on gaming!