Beyond Science: Guide to Fx

Rating:
Summary: A Quality Guide. A must have for any Alternity enthusiast.
Review: It is a ..shame that Wizards discontinued Alternity.

This guide is an excellent example of the versatility of the system. Beyond Science gives you the strait goods on how to add magic, faith and super powers to any campaign. All the abilities are well thought out and pretty detailed. They even throw in some FX using monsters for fun like golems, familiars, demons, angels and vampires!

On book quality, the art work on the cover and the inside are well done.

Now...my gripes. I feel that such a versatile thing such as FX should have been included in the Player's Guide (I know, it was included in the Gamemaster's guide) along with Psionics and cyberware. I also was dissapointed by the lack of a FX skill page for photocopying and such. Finally, FX can wipe the floor with Psionics and the guide dosn't go into enough detail about how to counter this overpowering. They aknowledge it and go into some detail about balancing but not enough for my tastes.

It may seem like alot of complaints but I am still very satisfied with the guide!

Rating:
Summary: A weak offering
Review: Much of this has been covered before. What Reynolds offers is a mish-mash of previously available material dressed up as something new. Don't be fooled by this one.

Rating:
Summary: THE definitive guide for adding magic to your Alternity game
Review: This guide presents everything you need to add FX (Arcane Magic, Faith FX, and Super Power FX) to your Alternity campaign world. In addition, it provides a few new FX creatures to add to the game, as well as instructions on how to create FX items and new FX abilities/skills.

FYI:

Arcane FX includes illusions, necromancy, diabolism, etc.

Faith FX is magic drawn from a user's beliefs, this includes Shamanism, Druidism, Taoism, etc.

Finally, Super Power FX is what you guessed it to be, your flying like Superman, wall-crawling like Spider Man abilities.

For those of you that play the Star Drive version of Alternity, this book contains a wealth of all-new material detailing the FX disciplines described above.

For those of you that enjoy the Dark Matter game, you will find about a 1/3 of the information presented to be a re-hash of the information presented in the Dark Matter source book. (For example, Diabolism is there, as are several of the Religion-related FX abilities, and a few of the FX creatures.)

Even though some of the FX material is re-cycled from the Dark Matter book, the new FX disciplines still make this a great value. New Disciplines like Alienism (Chthulu, anyone?) can definitely add flavor to an already dark world of consipiracies.

For those of you that want to try something completely different, the Super Power FX powers can be followed to make your favorite comic book heroes come to life. (Or to create a nasty villian to scare the hell out of your adventurers.)

In summary, the world of FX is opened by this new material, and the Alternity universe will never be the same again.

Rating:
Summary: THE definitive guide for adding magic to your Alternity game
Review: This guide presents everything you need to add FX (Arcane Magic, Faith FX, and Super Power FX) to your Alternity campaign world. In addition, it provides a few new FX creatures to add to the game, as well as instructions on how to create FX items and new FX abilities/skills.

FYI:

Arcane FX includes illusions, necromancy, diabolism, etc.

Faith FX is magic drawn from a user's beliefs, this includes Shamanism, Druidism, Taoism, etc.

Finally, Super Power FX is what you guessed it to be, your flying like Superman, wall-crawling like Spider Man abilities.

For those of you that play the Star Drive version of Alternity, this book contains a wealth of all-new material detailing the FX disciplines described above.

For those of you that enjoy the Dark Matter game, you will find about a 1/3 of the information presented to be a re-hash of the information presented in the Dark Matter source book. (For example, Diabolism is there, as are several of the Religion-related FX abilities, and a few of the FX creatures.)

Even though some of the FX material is re-cycled from the Dark Matter book, the new FX disciplines still make this a great value. New Disciplines like Alienism (Chthulu, anyone?) can definitely add flavor to an already dark world of consipiracies.

For those of you that want to try something completely different, the Super Power FX powers can be followed to make your favorite comic book heroes come to life. (Or to create a nasty villian to scare the hell out of your adventurers.)

In summary, the world of FX is opened by this new material, and the Alternity universe will never be the same again.

Rating:
Summary: Not as Useful as You Might Think
Review: While this FX Guide is true to the Alternity rules and can fit into virtually any setting, I can't help but dislike many of the choices for the new skills. Too many of the Arcane Magics have an evil feel to them (summoning evil spirits, blood magic, fire magic, etc), and too many of the Faith Magics are difficult or dangerous to use (alienism, shamanism, etc). This makes many of the new skills inappropriate for heroes in most settings. The Super Powers are, sadly (in my opinion), the best made and most playable.

Despite those complaints, it is a well written book and anyone who is interested in putting magic into their setting will want it. I will only warn Game Masters about the power of FX Skills--they will put Psionics to shame. Be very careful to balance them if they are used.

Rating:
Summary: Not as Useful as You Might Think
Review: While this FX Guide is true to the Alternity rules and can fit into virtually any setting, I can't help but dislike many of the choices for the new skills. Too many of the Arcane Magics have an evil feel to them (summoning evil spirits, blood magic, fire magic, etc), and too many of the Faith Magics are difficult or dangerous to use (alienism, shamanism, etc). This makes many of the new skills inappropriate for heroes in most settings. The Super Powers are, sadly (in my opinion), the best made and most playable.

Despite those complaints, it is a well written book and anyone who is interested in putting magic into their setting will want it. I will only warn Game Masters about the power of FX Skills--they will put Psionics to shame. Be very careful to balance them if they are used.