Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 793.93
EAN num: 9780786926480
ISBN number: 0786926481
Label: Wizards of the Coast
Manufacturer: Wizards of the Coast
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: February 14, 2003
Publishing house: Wizards of the Coast
Release Date: February 01, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 90843
Studio: Wizards of the Coast
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A New Breed of Adventurer
Whether wondrous or wicked, some monsters have a calling that reaches beyond the ordinary existence of their kind. Traveling alongside other intrepid characters, these heroic creatures carve their places in legend with sword, spell, tooth, and claw.
This supplement for the D&D game provides everything you need to play a monster as a character or to make the monsters your heroes fight even more formidable. Inside are over 50 all-new monster classes that show how creatures develop their characteristics and abilities as they gain levels. Along with new prestige classes and monster templates, Savage Species also features new feats, spells, magic items, and more.
To use this supplement, a Dungeon Master also needs the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. A player needs only the Player's Handbook and the Monster Manual.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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The idea of playing monster pcs is really neat and interesting, but most of how to do that is covered in the monster manuals and is much easier to understand. I was a little befuddled at the many templates, which are neat unto themselves, I just don't really see spending time creating these creatures in a campaing. They are plenty of monsters and other supplemeants to create baddies for your pcs to deal with. A flying dog? Okay, so just have a dog with wings, no 'winged creature' templete really needed. Are you really going to use a gelatinous bear? Do you have the time and patience to come up with an appropiate balanced creature with all the stats and adjustmeants involved? To me, the templates are a long involved process that doesn't really lend to the creative process. A spectre lurker? Neat, but a little much for most players to accept. It was just wayy out there for the most part. Also not starting out at level one can be a bit confusing and these levels in monster are a bit much to grasp and handle. So you advance in levels, but don't get any benefit of a class until you reach 'x' level. So that means (and I'm not entirely sure on this one) you would have to play extra smart until you got your class going and what hit die would you use? 10, 12, 4? It doesn't usually say as far as the 'humanoid' is concerned. Also how would this monster character fit in? Wouldn't every civilization pretty much be afraid of them and try to kill them or run from them? It doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun and lots of requiremeants and stats and rules to keep up can seem like a nightmare propisition. I really felt like it was a rehash of the monster manual and the prestiage classes are a little to esoteric in a diverse game world. But if you just have a hankering to play monster characters, then perhaps this will help you, but otherwise they are other supplemeants to introduce you to various races that are d20 in nature and also done by wotc that you could include in your campaing without upsetting balance and causing confusion. I mean, Palladium fantasy has TONS of races that would fit right into your world, with of course appropiate adjustmeants with the stats and that is just one example, I'm sure there are plenty more that would fit the bill. This one, in my estimation, is like a steak that is just overcooked.
Rated by buyers 
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It's a good aid for dungeon masters. Expecially when characters want to play something other than the standard character classes.
Many worked out examples and lots of guidelines for setting up your own monsters as player characters.
Rated by buyers -
Though this text is a handsome volume, packed with cool ideas and tons of crunchy bits, and moreover though I happen to like it quite a lot, it does not fully overcome the charges levelled against it, namely:
--it is a partial rehashing of 2E's *Complete Book of Humanoids* (which is less serious than the following, since 3E is basically just a rehashing of 2E in general),
--its unfortunate partial obsolescence (3.5E does indeed provide LA for each "playable" creature in the most recent *MM*--though *Savage Species* will ultimately consider all creatures to be "playable," whereas *MM* clearly does not), and
--the sad fact that WotC invests what must be approaching $0 in copyediting.
Those reservations noted, it must be said that the text opens up in 3E a new vista; instead of relying on the vanilla races of the *PH*, one can now, say, run a party of harpy infiltrators, a band of trollish barbarians, a medusa rogue, or (gods forbid it) a hive of illithids, demons, or some other uberpowerful beasties as PCs. (Though the *DMG* hints at such a vista, its suggestions proved to be unwieldy, incomplete, and generally confusing to most of us gamer-geeks.)
The text has many virtues in this regard:
1) new feats, spells, items, and prestige classes for monstrous folk, all generally well conceived.
2) some fair-to-middling notes on how to run a campiagn centered on the misadventures and cross accidents inevitably encountered by a group of bugbear PCs, for instance.
3) loads of bombass templates (these really are worthy of attention).
4) the reconceptualization of the game system entirely in terms of class--now, everything is a matter of class--no more monster advancing by the nebulous Hit Die (but this still doesn't resolve the bizarre aspect that Hit Die never correlated with CR; recall that level in a PC class always correlates with CR--why the inconsistency?).
5) tons and tons of statistical tables (the true value of the text). These also come with a set of guidelines to produce similar "class template" tables for any monster in the system--a very high degree of diversity for any game, which is surely a plus.
6) the introduction of both the "half-ogre" and "anthropomorphic animal" standard PC races (very good additions to the rules).
7) some very fine artwork
In these respects, there is value here, but unfortunately the aforementioned problems will limit its appeal and utility.
Rated by buyers -
If your playing with the 3.5 player's handbook, monster manual, and dungeon master's guide; this book is unnecessary. Because many ELs and LAs have been adjusted, and the entire system for LAs has been simplified with 3.5, this book has been rendered somewhat obsolete. It's best remaining features are some of it's example content (spells/feats/example progressions), but this book isn't going to be as helpful at a 3.5 table running a game using level adjustments.
Rated by buyers -
Well, the book starts out with a great concept- Monster races as PC's and how to balance them. It also introduces the idea of "monster class progression"- which allows one to start a beginning campaign with a "first level rakshasa" if one gets DM OK.
How did this brilliant idea go so very wrong? First is the literaly scads of typos & mistakes. Nearly every "monster class" has several very significant errors (the Rakshasa does not have any natural armour listed, for instance). WotC has also failed to do any Errata on this book- so far (and it seems doubtful- see subsequent paragraph).
But worse is the timing and planning. The book was pushed as being compliant with 3.5, but after the 3.5 MM came out, it was clear that Savage Species was anything but. Thus, a fairly expensive book became mostly obsolete within months of it's publication.
Still, there is an extensive system the DM can use to design his own "monster classes", and this remains useful. But the timing & errors make this book a bad buy for the player who has updated to 3.5.
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