The Noble Wild: An Animal Player’s Handbook for Fantasy Role-Playing Games (PFRPG) (based on
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review)
Skirmisher Publishing
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...and so, we tracked the evil necromancer Marrowglass through uncharted wilderness and over treacherous mountains, attempting to right the wrongs that were done in his name. We did bloody battle with his minions, losing not a few comrades along the way. We found his stronghold and stormed it in righteous fury. We clashed with the foul wizard in a battle that will live in song long after we fade from this world. We vanquished the villain through our might and our craft…
And then we ate him.
Welcome to the Noble Wild!
Take a look at fantasy adventure from a new perspective. Living secretly alongside the humans, elves, dwarves, and even orcs, Noble Animals are descended from god-touched bloodlines, capable of accomplishing amazing things. The Pathfinder edition of this Ennie Award-nominated book grants players and game-masters alike a new element to an ongoing campaign, or perhaps the foundation for an all-new campaign.
Features of this “Animal Player’s Handbook” include:
More than 60 playable species of Noble Animal
Adjustments to basic character classes, skills, feats, and magic to allow for animal characters
A new Basic Class, the Greater Familiar
New prestige classes, from the Alpha to the Man-Eater to the War Mount
A new concept, Deeds, that gives characters the opportunity to acquire magical abilities by performing heroic actions and paying an experience point cost
Illustrations by dozens of artists, including Sharon Daugherty, Todd Diamond, Carter Dippold, Phil Kightlinger, Russell Prime, Ryan Rouse, George Sieretski, Geoff Weber, and Kira Woodmansee
Created by Lee Garvin, author of Control and the acclaimed Tales From the Floating Vagabond, this book introduces comprehensive rules for playing intelligent animals. It will appeal to everyone from groups that want to try all-animal or mixed animal-humanoid parties, to players who want to expand their animal companions and familiars, to gamemasters who wish to spring interesting and unexpected foes against their players.
I wouldn't suggest using everything in the book and dropping it into just any campaign, but the concept is so broad and interesting that its pretty easy to use piecemeal in a lot of campaigns.
If you have a unique animal that is intelligent, and you want to give it class levels, you are covered. If you want to go the full Monty and run a Narnia style campaign with full on intelligent animals as common as other intelligent races, or if you want your Faerie realm populated with intelligent animals, you have more than enough information for that too.
As an example of what I mean by using things piecemeal, the first part of the book deals with the stats that animals have compared to other races. You can use this easily with the normal rules and make up a character.
If you want to, you can use the information on separate magic for animals and other races and blood magic, but you can also just use the animals as is for their statistics.
One of the first things that this product made me think of was going back to the 1st edition concept of reincarnation allowing for animal reincarnations, and another concept that this book helps to support is the idea of awakening an animal and using it as a cohort for someone in the party.
That having been said, for what might be a niche campaign, its a sizable investment. Not that its not well done, or fun to read, but its not something that will appeal to everyone ( . . . says the man whose wife has often said she hates any "talking animal" fantasy stories).
If you are really interested in how you might play animals as viable characters in a Pathfinder RPG campaign, its really well done and worth a look. If you are just looking for more general campaign information, or more on "standard" animals, its might be a bit too much of a "fringe" product for what you are looking for.
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