Faith & Avatars

I felt like I was taking a chance bying this book, hard to understand what is really in it by these reviews. The content is as follows: An introduction to the Powers of the realms. (How worship works, how spheres work, Births & Deaths of Powers, Divine abilities and Members of the Clergy). The Fearûnian Pantheon (Listing all the Deities, naming their aliases, allies, foes, symbols etc etc. Then describing its avatar, church and special priest.) At the end there is listed a number of priest classes: Clerics, Crusaders, Druids, Monks, Mystics and Shamans. Then it describes these classes.So why should you buy this book? Maybe you need some in-depth information for a number of priests in your realm, or you need a circle of believers, maybe you need a divine opposing power, a cult worshipping a power they are trying to restore. This book provides the perfect solution and information for you. Maybe you just need new priest spells, then there are a handfull listed for every Speciality Priest in this book.196 pages total with colour drawings of all the deities' separate priests. B/W pictures of groups of deities within the pages aswell. An enjoyable and very useful book.

Julia Martin and Eric Boyd team up to provide one of the most important titles in a Forgotten Realms library. An exhaustive list of all the Lesser through Greater human gods and their churches. This supplement provides numerous spells, and special powers with which to make each different faith pop out from the rest. It details the clergy, the ethos, and all important information needed to properly bring the Fearunian pantheon to life (figuratively of course) in your campaing, a must have! (*Note* the demi-gods and demi-human pantheons are detailed in two subsequent texts of equal quality, "Powers & Pantheons", and "Demi-Human Deities")

This is an amazing product!!! While best suited for an FR Campaign, any DM could benefit from the information here, especially from the section on each god's dogma and the Specialty Priests (after all, Tempus is a pretty typical war god and that Talos kit works well for priest of a god like Zeus). The Demihuman Deities book is perhaps even more useful as these gods, like Moradin and Corellon, are involved in many D & D worlds. GET THE BOOK!!! No matter what the bad reviews may say, this IS NOT reprinted stuff... the SP kits in FR Adventures were terrible and as far as sitting down and doing all this yourself, GOOD LUCK! This is the best roleplaying product in the TSR line.

Normally I'm loathe to give a product five stars, but this is one of the best AD & D accessories I've ever seen. Tons of information on all the significant powers(even dead powers), their faiths, and their specialty priests(some of whom are VERY powerful... see Helm's section). New character classes, information on killing and ressurecting gods, and much more make this the definite resource for DMs and cleric fans playing in the Realms. Ever want to see how Cyric's church manages to operate, play a crusader of Lathander, or bring Bane back from the dead? Now you can. Combine this with Monster Mythology -which it makes references to- and you have all the godly information you could ever need in the Realms. No, I am *not* being paid by T$R; this is really that good of a product. It does repeat some old information, but if you missed out on old Realms pantheon publications, you'll do well to buy this. More than worth its cover price -- a rarity among T$R products these days.

Finally, TSR made a book focusing the role-play! The Faiths & Avatar series gives to the priests of the Forgotten Realms details of church organization, specialty priests powers, and more! Some information was retrieved from older books (i.e. Forgotten Adventures and the first Boxed Set), but that's revised, and a lot of new information was added (including the Avatar statistics and powers). One of the best Forgotten Realms accessories ever published.