Eoris - Part 2

Eoris is a two book set contained in a sturdy slipcase.  I reviewed the first book earlier so reading that may be informative.  The second physical book contains Book Three (Thought) which is dedicated entirely to the mechanical system underlying Eoris including most (but not all) of the information needed to build a character.  I'm not going delve too deep into the actual mechanics (other then the basic system) since crunch is not my forte and I haven't had a chance to play Eoris which will more greatly inform on the viability of the system.

Book Three is broken up into 9 chapters starting out with the basic system information and working through the various systems from there.  The basic system shares a lot of similarities to White Wolf's Storyteller system but relies on rolling D20s rather then D10s and includes a special "Essence" die which depending on its roll can greatly change the outcome regardless of whether you succeed or fail with your overall pool.  The system does add some more granularity then White Wolf by allowing changing of both the target number or the number of successes needed.  Systematically I think this allows for a lot of fine tuning on the part of the Narrator.  One problem in the book with having these two different ways at scaling power is that the reader must pay careful attention to whether a bonus is modifying the target number (thus making a -1 a good thing) or modifying the dice pool (-1 doesn't look quite so good now).  Sometimes this isn't readily apparent especially in the race selection area.

Eoris has support for social combat which interestingly can coincide with physical combat and can reduce overall die pools and inflict status anomalies onto others.  This seems to make social combat a vastly more useful affair especially since that allows non-physical characters a chance to contribute to combat beyond just hiding.  Now they can hide and hurl insults at their foes reducing them to mental slag heaps.

Character creation feels rather complicated.  Oddly the reader is required to reference the other book for information on some powers and abilities.  This seems somewhat less then ideal but other then that the sections are fairly straightforward.  There are a large amount of powers and spells (called Songs here) to choose from although none of them feel terribly exciting.  Useful, yes, but nothing that seemed to reach off the page.  Likewise we're given beautiful images of a wide assortment of rare weapons and it felt like their individual abilities weren't as awesome as they looked.  Some of this feel may be mitigated by actual play showing off their true strengths but as a read it just felt un-impressive.

Overall this book felt like it could use a little better organization just like its partner.  Editing was again impressive and art is still amazing.  It stills feels like to me that it's missing some of a greater potential so it's going to sit at 7 out of 10.

Next Up: Gatecrashing