Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds (Races of Renown) [Paperback]

Owen K. C. Stephens (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 111 pages
• Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972675604
• ISBN-13: 978-0972675604
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,586,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another solid effort from Green Ronin Publishing, August 5, 2003

By 

J. Roberts "RP madman" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds (Races of Renown) (Paperback)

Having enjoyed their Master Class books, I decided to give one of the Races of Renown books a try.

Now, my understanding is that Green Ronin is prohibited from using any race-related material already published by Wizards of the Coast, so I avoided the books on orcs, whom I already know quite well, and drow, who I scarcely ever use, and went for what promised to be the most original book, this one.

This book really is original, providing some unique half-breed races, along with balanced rules for creating you own halfbreeds, either as races or templates. A few of the half-breeds use rules that make them a little to easy to abuse, particularly the Wyrd, an ogre mage/elf cross, but for the most part they're fair and balanced and, most importantly, playable.

There's only one real flaw with this book, and that's a definite trend towards a lot of nature-focused half-breeds, combining various fey creatures with various woods-friendly humanoids. The results are always interesting (I have a player who now wants to play a woodwose), but perhaps a trifle repetitive. Since I generally run a very nature-focused game, I don't have a problem with it and the book doesn't lose any stars.

The feats and items sections are interesting as well, providing rules for making new race-specific items along with a few new examples, and feats that take advantage of the mixed heritage of the book's races.

The prestige classes are adequate but, in my opinion, underpowered. Since they only take up a scant eight or nine pages, again, the book loses no marks with me for this. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go look at the Green Ronin web-site and see if any other books catch my eye.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but..., February 12, 2005

By 

Dale Perkins "BusyMom" (Encinitas, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds (Races of Renown) (Paperback)

I absolutly loved this book. I've always loved "half-breeds", so when I saw this book I quickly bought it. I wasn't dissapointed. The art was great (with the exception of Makbin), the writing was wonderful and it also offered quite a bit of "crunchy" parts as well.

Pros:
The layout was wonderful and the writing was well-written and interesting. Though not as entertaining as a novel, I enjoyed reading this book- it was interesting and well written. The art is also great, if slightly comic-booky in style. The races written up are interesting, albeit strange and exotic- but that's the way I like them. The info on half-breeds in society is helpful. All in all it's a great book, but...

Cons:
As the previous reviewer stated, quite alot of the races are crosses between nature friendly humanoids and nature "monsters". There's also quite alot of elf half-breeds. The races listed are also extremely exotic and strange- so if you don't like bizaare stuff then this book isn't for you. I was expecting stuff like orcs/dwarves and that sort of thing, not things like halfling/blink dogs, elf/naga or elf/giant eagles. Still, I was fine with that-I loved it actually, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Bastards and Bloodlines still has some or the more "normalish" half-breeds, too, though.

This my own personal pet-peeve, but it seemed to me like alot of the half-breeds parents got together, had a baby, and then seperated and abandoned the child to one of the parent races. One of the reasons that I love half-breeds is that the idea that two unlike races can fall in love and marry and have a half-breed child is interesting and has great story and roleplaying oppurotunity. A treant that fell in love with an elven druid and worked hard to win her heart, overcome elven resistence and established an area to ensure peace for their children and their lives is much more interesting then "a treant and an elf have a baby and then abandon each other and their child".

Still, this book is great, and has very little flaws.

Art: 9- the art in this book was great, if slightly comic-bookish. I dislike Makbin (one of the artists) but otherwise the art was good.
Writing: 10- it was extremely well-written, with very minor flaws.
Playability: 9- if you ever need a resource for half-breeds, this is the book for you. One of my players begged for me to "magically change" his half-elf into a Decataur, they loved it. I've also dropped in a couple Half-breed NPC's in the campaign, and they made the game much more interesting and fun.

All in all, a great book, and if your even remotely interested in half-breeds, this is your book- buy it now!

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent source, but prepare to make your own changes, November 10, 2011

By 

Strormer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds (Races of Renown) (Paperback)

This book is one of my favorite outside splats for DND. It gives a great deal of tools and ideas to work with while providing straightforward and ready to use half-breeds, if that is what you're looking for. Previous reviews have said most of what needs saying, but I'll add in my two cents, and why I feel this book didn't quite make it to five stars.
This book is hit heavily by level adjustment, which makes most of the interesting races nigh unplayable simply because they have level adjustments in the stratosphere, including some races that really didn't deserve to be as high as they received. Still, most if not all of what is found in this book can be toyed with to create a lot of fantastic new races for your players to enjoy without deviating too extensively from the existing races.
As a side note, the book is gorgeous and each half breed is lovingly illustrated in a nice, sketchy style. If you're a world builder, like me, this book is a must have.