Pyramid Review
Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races
Published by Fantasy Flight Games
Line Developer Greg Benage
176 b&w pages; $24.95
Mythic Races follows hot on the heels of the hardcover Traps & Treachery. Like that book, there is a focused effort by Fantasy Flight Games to expand the d20 OGL system in ways that aren't receiving a lot of support. In this case, it's the introduction of almost 30 new races.
The races in the book run from races comparable to standard elves and dwarves like the Coivalds (short and stout forest guardians), the water-based ooloi, and the strong-yet-slow tremen. There are more powerful races like the Aaleear, a race physically similar to the halflings of old (as in "short and fat"), and the very powerful Stonegrunts, creatures created by the dwarves in times long past.
Each race has background information followed by personality, physical description, relations, alignment, lands, religion, language, names, specific names, adventurers, racial traits (including level equivalency), and prestige classes associated with the race. The most important parts for mini-maxers are how well the racial traits which include special abilities, balance out with the level equivalency. The level equivalency is a trait that shows how powerful such a creature is. For example, a race with a +1 level equivalency is equal to a 2nd level character.
Just for reference, there are ten with a 0 level, which is supposed to equal the races in the players handbook and minor creatures like . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 19, 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.