Dungeon Dressing: Doors

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108149[1]By Thilo Graf

This installment of the Dungeon Dressing-line from Raging Swan Press is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC/foreword, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 6 pages of content, so let’s check this out!

Much like the other installments of Dungeon Dressing, this pdf kicks off with useful rules-information compiled for the DM’s ease of reference: From Perception-check-DC-modifications to locks and their DC to sample stats for doors, we get a nice slew of useful pieces of information, including stats for beaded curtains, bone doors as well as 5 conditions that modify the stats provided for the respective doors, including str-check DCs, HP etc.

After this page of useful information, we’re off to the first table, in which we are introduced to varied characteristics to make your doors more interesting, ranging from being handle-less to being trapped.

A to a of 98 different dressings and cosmetic details are also provided for varying doors, with 99 being the roll-twice entry and 100 indicating a trap.

Speaking of traps – we also get a couple of sample traps, spanning CRs 3 to 11 and including multiple variants of the poison needle-trap – said variants mention e.g. purple worm poison, but don’t provide the effects, making the entry slightly less comfortable to use than I’m used to by the supremely organized pdfs of Raging Swan. The pdf also lists common magical defences via symbols, but again, while we get CR etc., shortened effects would have been nice, if only for convenience’s sake. Plus: I’ve seen l these traps done before.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting, as almost always with Raging Swan Press, is top-notch and beyond reproach. Layout adheres to S’s elegant 2-column standard and the pdf comes in two versions, one optimized for e-readers and one to be printed out. The pdfs are extensively bookmarked.

Author Jeff Erwin provides us with interesting dungeon dressings for doors, but when contrasted to “So what’s the Mount like, anyways” or other Dungeon Dressings, I can’t help but feel as if the pdf has its focus slightly askew. The traps, while nice, are simply not that exciting and take up too much space – space that could have been used for other things – like handles, hinges, fortifications, more things with rules-modifications to modify doors etc.

Don’t get me wrong, there is per se nothing wrong with this pdf, it just isn’t up to the insane standard the series has set itself and could have used a tighter focus – or more interesting traps.

Thus, while there is nothing wrong per se with this pdf, I feel I can’t go higher than 3.5 stars on it, rounded down to 3 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.

Dungeon Dressing: Doors is available from:

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