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Review: Superior Synergy |  |
This is a review of Superior Synergy: Fantasy by Misfit Studios.
Superior Synergy asks the question: why does skill synergy begin and end at five ranks? It’s an interesting question, to be sure. In a nutshell, skill synergies now have four ‘benchmarks’: one at five, ten, fifteen and twenty ranks. Some are simply higher skill bonuses, while others allow you to use skills faster, or cause skill effects to last longer. In general, the new synergy effects are easy to integrate, seem to be balanced, and are pretty useful on the whole.
Slightly more interesting, but possibly less balanced, are feat synergies. When you take certain combinations of feats, you gain bonus abilities related to the required feats, without having to spend another feat slot. These abilities tend to be more potent than skill synergies, but not quite as powerful as true feats. While they may seem somewhat unbalanced (and the author as much as admits to this), this concept is not without precedent. In Wizards’ own Oriental Adventures there is a similar mechanic used to emulate mastery of a martial arts style. Still, look at feat synergies with a careful eye.
It should be mentioned that more effort could have been put into editing this work. I noticed a number of spelling and grammar errors, though this hardly makes the book less useful as a resource. Overall, I found this e-book to be worth using, and I plan to pillage it for ideas to use in my campaign. However, those looking for something to add flavor to their game should look elsewhere; this work is almost one hundred percent mechanics.
