Going back through my past reviews, I discovered this one on a defunct website, so I’m reposting it on my main blog. Wizards released Races of Stone in August 2004 for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition. This review originally appeared on 3rdedition.org, but sadly that site has been defunct for many years.

Races of Stone represents a departure by Wizards of the Coast from the style of their recent books. It contains new prestige classes, feats and magic, but includes cultural and demographic notes not found elsewhere. The book covers the dwarf, gnome and goliath races, enriching their role-playing possibilities in D&D. You can see hints of this new approach in the Planar Handbook and the Complete series, but Races of Stone uses it far more comprehensively.

The races of dwarves and gnomes should be familiar to you already. The goliath is a new nomadic, mountain-dwelling race. They are barbaric and competitive and provide a distinct contrast to the others.

Each of the first three chapters is devoted to one of these races, describing their culture in quite some detail. These chapters take the first 84 pages of the book, and there are very few game notes in this section. Instead, many passages give additional guidance on using the information; either for role-playing the races or on using employing them in adventures.

Each of the cultural chapters begins with “A Day in the Life”. This section, no longer than a page, explains what a typical day is like for a member of the race in question. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy its style. However, I found the rest of the book more pleasing.

This section is followed by descriptions of the race’s culture and traits. Here are the headings from the chapter on dwarves: Description; Psychology; Dwarven Life; Society and Culture; Dwarves and Other Races; Religion; History and Folklore; Language; Cities and Settlements; and Creating Dwarven Characters.

Often, I was able to see correspondences between aspects of these cultural descriptions and parts of the real world. For example, the section on gnome legends has a story called “Jack the Giant Killer”, a re-telling of “Jack and the Beanstalk”. The dwarves have a version of Atlantis, but these stories are not straight retellings. They adapt elements and go in surprising directions. The result is something that, due to its real-world origins, has a resonance with the readers. It nonetheless creates a description of a race that is not human. It’s great having a real-world touchpoint from which to build a character; creating something from whole cloth is much harder.

There are assumptions made here about the role and culture of each race that may not apply in your game. Indeed, although it builds on the information in the Player’s Handbook, it does not entirely build on what has gone before in previous editions of D&D. The pantheons are new, as are many aspects of the races’ cultures.

In the case of the gnomes, this is a great relief: the authors depict the race seriously – although they might remain practical jokers, there is now a much deeper side to their personalities. A dichotomy between a search for truth by masters of illusion makes for an interesting combination.

They are depicted as a race that embraces innovation and change: “Rebellion, exploration and innovations – these concepts as much embody the traditional gnome way of life as their innate skill with illusions and love of art”. Also: “Gnomes are both blessed and cursed with a philosophical bent and an insatiable curiosity. They express these feelings through art, invention and magic – specifically illusions.” Their main classes are Bard, Illusionist and Ranger.

Dwarves remain, as one might expect, a clannish, stout-hearted folk that are fond of stonework and mining. The main departure from their depiction in earlier editions is that arcane magic is now integrated into their culture. Dwarven sorcerers are the prime exponents of dwarven magic, a decision I agree with, despite the Charisma penalty that dwarves incur.

The results of living underground in close proximity to other dwarves is also examined: privacy, for a dwarf, is more turned towards their feelings and emotions than what is standard for us, as physical privacy is so hard to come by. The main dwarf classes (for which racial substitution levels are given in a later chapter) are Cleric, Fighter and Sorcerer.

Goliaths, the new race, are reclusive and nomadic, although they are also highly competitive and daring, and fond of sports and fighting. The competitive side gives for interesting role-playing: it can be a definite disadvantage. A goliath can become quite foolhardy, trying to outdo their previous best. “Last time I defeated a young dragon, next time it must be an adult!”

They have a Level Adjustment of +1, mainly due to their high Strengths (+4) and Powerful Builds (they are treated as Large for many purposes, though they do keep a Medium creature’s space and reach). Not surprisingly, their favoured class is Barbarian, although Druids and Rogues also are important classes to them.

The fourth chapter describes five new mountain races, in about as much detail as you’ll find in the Player’s Handbook. Chaos Gnomes, Dream Dwarves, Feral Garguns (a type of even more barbaric goliath), Stonechildren and Whisper Gnomes are those covered here. Most of them look fairly well balanced and interesting, but I find the Whisper Gnome to be problematical: they seem superior to the halfling in almost every way. Surely they should be a LA +1 race?

With the fifth chapter, we really get to the rules information in the book. This chapter details fifteen new prestige classes. Most of them are either mountain-based or limited to a mountain-dwelling race, i.e. dwarves, gnomes and goliaths. I rather like the Battlesmith, a five-level dwarven prestige class that is extremely effective at crafting magical weapons and armor: each level of Battlesmith gives a bonus of +3 caster levels for that purpose. Thus a Fighter 7/Battlesmith 5 can create +5 magic weapons. It is also a fair warrior, and has other interesting abilities.

Each of the prestige classes also has adaptation notes, for using them in contexts that are not those for what it was designed. Thus, the Dawncaller, a goliath bardic prestige class, gives ideas as to using it for non-goliath characters. This feature, also seen in Complete Divine, is extremely welcome. A sample character of each prestige class is also given, in the style of Complete Warrior.

The list of prestige classes is as follows:

• Battlesmith – a skilled dwarven armorer, weaponsmith and warrior
• Blade Bravo – a gnome duelist, skilled with the rapier
• Cragtop Archer – a mountain archer, skilled at ambushing people from above
• Dawncaller – a goliath bard responsible for guarding their people through the night
• Deepwarden – a dwarven guard who patrols the underdark and deals with foes of the dwarven people
• Divine Prankster – a gnome cleric/bard prestige class
• Earth Dreamer – a spellcaster with affinity for the earth and mountains
• Goliath Liberator – a goliath ranger-type who rescues his kin from giants
• Iron Mind – a psionic prestige class focussed on defense
• Peregrine Runner – a goliath diplomat and scout, skilled at quickly moving from one tribe to another.
• Runesmith – a dwarven arcanist, skilled with runic magic
• Shadowcraft Mage – a gnome illusionist type who can manipulate shadows
• Stoneblessed – a character that bonds with a mountain race not their own, and gains benefits similar to that race
• Stonedeath Assassin – a goblinoid assassin
• Stonespeaker Guardian – a goliath divine spellcaster with special connection to the earth

The sixth chapter, Character Options, is divided into three parts.

The first deals with new uses for skills. Appraise, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Handle Animal, Listen, Ride, Sleight of Hand, Spellcraft, Survival and Use Rope are all expanded upon, primarily with a thought for using them as a member of a mountain race. For instance, Use Rope and Climb may be used together to rappel down a rope.

The second part gives a great number of new feats: over 60 of them. These feats are divided into the following types: General, Racial (that can be taken only by a particular race), Bardic Music, Divine, Item Creation, Psionic, Weapon Style and Wild.

For the most part, they seem well balanced and of the sort to add quite a bit of flavor to your characters. I was particularly happy to see the Bardic Music feats: for instance, Enchanting Song allows you to expend a daily use of your bardic music to increase the caster level and DC of one of your enchantment spells. Conversely, Inspire Spellpower gives you the ability to sing a new song to improve your allies’ spellcasting abilities!

Any character may take most of these feats, so this section has the most application outside of a mountain campaign.

The third part of this chapter details the Racial Substitution Levels, an idea introduced in the Planar Handbook. The idea is that you make your character’s class more appropriate to your race by substituting certain abilities at various levels. For instance, a 1st level dwarven fighter may forego the bonus feat normally gained, in exchange for taking a d12 hit die (at that level only), Knowledge (Dungeoneering) as a class skill (again, only at that level), and Axe Focus – a version of Weapon Focus that applies to all axes.

For the most part, these Racial Substitution Levels seem to be slightly more powerful than taking the normal level of that class. However, I do not believe it is in any game-breaking way. I feel that the added flavor makes up for any minor gain in power. In the case of the Dwarven Sorcerer, it is a good way of making up for the flaws that choosing what would normally be an inferior race/class combination.

The seventh chapter, Equipment and Magic, is mainly concerned with new magic. A few new exotic armors and weapons are presented, followed by a few new spells, psionic powers and magic items.

Of most interest to me in this chapter were the dwarven Ancestor Weapons, the Magic Forges and the Rune Circles. All of these are not described in great length, but what is detailed is enough to allow DMs and players to use them effectively and develop them more in their own campaigns.

The final chapter, Campaigns of Stone, is mainly concerned with giving guidelines for creating communities of dwarves, gnomes and goliaths. Here you may find details on holidays, sample NPCs, demographics and how these communities treat outsiders.

I am most interested in the idea of holidays described here, for they have a game effect. For instance, gnomes get an additional +1 DC to their illusion spells during an annual celebration of illusions, the Feast of Lights. Suggestions for holidays for other races or purposes are also given, beyond those of dwarves, gnomes and goliaths.

The book concludes with an appendix listing one hundred adventure ideas designed for use with the information in this book. I was extremely happy to see this here.

Content: 4

With a mix of information aimed at role-playing, adventure building and character building, Races of Stone displays a approach that we haven’t seen enough of in recent D&D books. I hope this trend continues.

One possible weakness of this book is that it doesn’t deal with the traditional subraces of the dwarves and gnomes: no mention at all is made of the difference between hill and mountain dwarves, nor of the other dwarven subraces and svirfneblin.

Clarity: 4.5

As with most D&D books by Wizards, the rules are written in a clear and standard format that makes them easy to read. Unfortunately, there is a repeating of information in the NPC stat blocks that doesn’t need to be there. Do we really need to waste 10 lines each time a Goliath’s traits are listed? This happens over a dozen times in the book, and this practice, begun in Complete Warrior, really should be stopped. A page reference would be far more useful in this context.

Layout/Artwork: 3.5

The standard layout of the D&D supplement book is employed here, and it is both familiar and attractive. The artwork is by a variety of artists, and is good in quality. However, I do feel that truly inspired artwork is not present. I would like to see more dynamic pictures as too often only static poses are given. Where is the excitement of a D&D adventure? Not to be found in the artwork, it seems.

Another gripe I have about the layout concerns the pages that start each chapter: the background color is far too dark, making the text very hard to read. Surely it would not be that hard to lighten the background and significantly improve the readability of these pages?

Originality: 4.5

One of the most impressive things about Races of Stone is its willingness to abandon a strict rehashing of the past and go in new directions. The Goliaths are an impressive new race, significantly different from the other PC races of D&D, and the new take on the Gnome culture brings a long-needed seriousness and diversity to the race.

Development/Editing: 4

The 3.5E series of D&D supplements have had a superior development process, with a fairly strong grasp of the implications posed by the mechanics of the game. The editing, however, has been weak, especially in the Player’s Handbook and Complete Divine, both of which have a mass of errors that should have been caught. I am glad to say that Races of Stone has very few editing errors, and maintains the strong development seen in other books. It is still not perfect, however.

The main flaws include the power of the Whisper Gnome (which probably should have a Level Adjustment of +1) and the lack of tables for determining the height, weight and age of goliath characters. What makes this second lapse quite unusual is that such tables are given for the minor races given in this book. This would be a simple enough error to make, but it is frustrating to see.

Value: 4

A 192-page colour hardcover for $29.95 is the standard price you expect to pay from Wizards these days. It’s somewhat expensive, but Races of Stone is a well-presented book and worth it in my opinion.

Overall: 4

Races of Stone is a strong book, providing a good selection of information on two established D&D races, and providing a strong introduction to the new race of Goliaths. It is aimed primarily at the player, although a DM should be able to find many things in it to enhance their campaign, from adventure hooks to unusual cultural settings.

In the end, I am very glad to possess Races of Stone; it was worth buying. Even though dwarves and gnomes are not common in my campaigns, this book has a good possibility of changing that, and I am really looking forward to Races of Destiny and Races of the Wild; if they are handled in as professional manner as this book, I feel that things are looking good for the future of D&D.