Looking forward to Rifts World Book 15 Spirit West review? Well, I am so that’s what matters.. ya.. me. Ok, really this is meant for you all so I hope it’s helpful.
Spirit West has over 12 new OCCs, magical fetishes, totem animals and special character traits, shamanic spells, native American beliefs culture, and more.
An in-depth look at the new American Indian, various tribes, cultures, magic, and gods. While the White Man wars with D-Bees, sorcerers and his brothers in the East, the Red Man is quietly building new nations in the West.
Gm Material of Rifts Spirit West
The vast majority of the information within describes the area west of the Coalition States area and how the spirits and animals are tied to the native americans. The tribes have their own areas and interactions with each other.
Player Material of Spirit West
Players mostly get access to some new occs, spells, and totems that take the place of equipment you would get if playing a high-tech using class.
Story material of Rifts Spirit West
To simplify the long explanations of different Native Americans there are those that accept technology and those that don’t. If they accept technology then they generally cant use the native american OCCs, pick a totem, or other traditionalist options. The opposite applies to traditionalists.
Traditionalists fear and dislike technology because it poses a true threat and power, plus it has a long history of destroying nature. If whites or other D-bees live strictly by the same ideals as traditionalists they will be given full status and treated without bias.
The story continues with other tribes
In addition to those two types, there are a lot of separate tribes, clans, and groups within the Native Americans of Rifts Earth. In a setting like Rifts Earth, I wonder if these distinctions would still exist or if perhaps it’s going a bit far. In practice, I don’t find that these distinctions would be all that useful to a game. It’s not bad, wrong, or anything like it’s just that North America is reduced in population so far as it is, would it really be possible to have this many layers of separation.. Im just pondering more than anything.
The main story I see is that of some Black Winged monster men running around taking humans as slaves to build a 2nd city after the first was liberated by Native Americans.
The originality of Spirit West
A lot of ideas come in this book. I’m fairly neutral on the usefulness of it as a whole. There are a lot of spirits described, an entire spirit realm and how it works, plus many new native american spells and occs. So I want to say it’s really original but I personally just find most of it dull.
Is Rifts World Book 15 Spirit West game breaking
The paradox shaman is very much a game-breaking element. As is the Stone Giants spirit attack. Its attack can go through armor, robots, etc and if it infects someone they will eventually die. Few things heal its deadly effects. I’m not sure I’d use it against characters under 10th level, ya it’s potentially that nasty.
One could consider the Star-People to be game-breaking as well. They are like doppelgangers from other games that consume a target and then copy that target’s abilities down to the DNA level.
How good are the occs from world book 15
The native american occs offer some good diversity and make them rather strong. For example, the Spirit Warrior selects 1 of 4 elemental realms to connect with and then gains abilities based n that realm. As earth warriors, they gain supernatural strength and become MDC beings. As air warriors, they would gain wingless flight and invisibility.
Some of their powers are without a PPE cost while others are. So these options are pretty neat at an initial glance but without the use of advanced technology, it does limit their ability in many areas. In addition, a basic mage could have flight, MDC shields, armor, weapons, and other high-tech gadgets. So do the limitations outweigh their usefulness.. hard to say but you might enjoy playing them yourselves.
The rule of thumb for fetishes is that spirits and gods can create them and bestow any type, upon anybody they like without limit. So with this in mind, you could allow the creation of many totems to try offsetting the above limitations.
Tabletop roleplaying game thoughts
Something I’ve said many times is that when new books in any game come out there seems to be this rule that any time you add one thing to a class, race, item, etc you have to have a limitation. This has a tendency of creating gimick-like characters where that are incredibly situational and totally one-sided. That often makes the class less interesting to play, and when reading them I often feel a sense of “MEH”. Many classes in most games are that way, but exceptions like the paradox shaman do occur.
The Paradox Shaman is a fully capable mage that has access at level 1 to some of the most insanely powerful spells and types of spell magic. If you haven’t read Anti-magic cloud do so, it’s one of those spells that my group often puts in the “we don’t use this spell, it doesn’t exist” categories. Simply for the fact that it utterly breaks the entire idea of magic. Also, the shaman gets temporal magic (time magic) and dimension magic.
Learn about Rifts England which discusses Temporal Magic here.
How well does Spirit West mix with the core book
It’s a great way book to get a good overall idea of the areas outside of Coalition-held lands. It’s not as useful to me as the prior book, New West though.