OSSR: Book of Erotic Fantasy

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OSSR: Book of Erotic Fantasy

Post by Username17 »

Well, I passed my surgery exam, and you know what that means: It is time to drink heavily and review old books. Today's book is the oft-maligned and semi-legendary Book of Erotic Fantasy.
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We're going to get into the contents in a bit, but I have to spend some time getting my blood alcohol level up and it seems as good a time as any to talk about the book's peculiar history. Do you notice anything weird about that cover? Like how it says it is "compliant with the Open Gaming License", and compatible with the world's best selling Fantasy Roleplaying Game" instead of mentioning d20 or D&D anywhere? That's because apparently when WotC found out they were going to do this book, they flipped their shit and refused to allow them to use any of their trademarks on pain of lawsuit. That's not a real d20 symbol there, that's a literal photograph of a twenty sided die!

In many ways, you could say that the BoEF is a harbinger to the whole GSL fiasco. WotC found out that they really weren't comfortable with some of the things that people wanted to do with the OGL, so they sent their lawyers in to put a stop to it as much as they were able. And that turned out to be hardly at all, since most people don't even notice that the Book of Erotic Fantasy isn't technically part of the d20 line. More than one person has wonder what exactly it was about the Book of Erotic Fantasy that made WotC start rattling the bars of the cage they had made for themselves. I mean, they had their own "mature" line, and they never seemed to give a crap that Avalanche Press had a d20 line. To be honest, I'm really not sure. I think it might be just the fact that it actually had the word "Erotic" in the title. That maybe Hasbro's law squad never honestly looked at the cover of an Avalanche Press book or even pondered whether the "Book of Vile Darkness" might have nipples in it.

Anyways, it's 2003 and D&D is doing it's giant "fuck you" into 3.5. The Book of Erotic Fantasy has an entire page devoted to explaining how they are nominally and barley falling within the legal framework of the Open Gaming License, but forgets to note that this book is itself under copyright. I am just going to drink some more. This book also notes that it has 20 playtesters, which is twenty more than the 3.5 revision had, making it technically a more professionally produced product. That's going to make me drink again. There's a special thank-you section that starts by thanking a corset manufacturer and it lists the models who posed for this book. Yes, it uses photographs rather than fantasy illustrations. The list of models is really long, and a brief set of internet searches for them reveals that your initial impression upon flipping through the book is correct: the models are indeed just an essentially random collection of the hottest LARPers the authors knew from around the area (that area is Seattle, by the way). This in turn suggests a new possible reason for WotC's law team bringing the hammer down on this project: it is actually made in WotC's literal back yard with a shockingly large group of participants, and it is quite probable that some of the people working on this project were known by some of the people working at WotC.

But we should start reviewing the actual content. The book is 190 pages, and filled with photos of various LARPers who range from "pretty hot" to "not that hot". While you will see the occasional chain connected to a nipple, the eroticism level in the art pieces is frankly pretty low even for niche fetish work. If Brazzers or Vivid did a photoshoot that was D&D themed, it would probably have more eroticism in the preview images than this book has in its entirety. Also, some of the images have been altered with a computer and the results are very bad looking. If you were wondering if the art might be "obscene", then it seems like the book makers were thinking of you: they don't show a cock or vag until page 142 - presumably figuring that people looking for genitals would have given up by then. There is a photographed display of medieval dildos though.

The introduction says that they are trying to reach as broad an audience as possible and thus providing a writeup for every attitude and style of sex they can think of in as judgement-free a context as they can manage. You might think that with a mission statement like that, that much of the book would be dry lists that are about as far from "erotic" as you can imagine. And you'd be right. The introduction also tells you what each chapter is about and warns you that the book is not for immature readers and disavows any responsibility for the "consequences of using this book".
:roll:

Chapter 1: Love, Sex, and Roleplaying

The chapter begins with a picture that does a CG effect to try to make some human models look like tiny fairies. It looks like a special effect from a Toho film. It's really bad. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one would be worth "This is terrible" printed three hundred and thirty three times. It's actually the worst picture in the whole book, which makes you wonder why they decided to lead with it.

Then before even getting into the contents of the chapter, they do a paragraph on Rule Zero, and how the DM can totally change this section. While technically meaningless, in that Rule Zero applies all the time and doesn't need to be mentioned in any chapter of any supplement, I think in this particular case it is more out of place than usual. While it mentions "player sensibilities" as a thing that the DM might change the rules in response to, I really think that sex is really absolutely the last place you would want to emphasize a rule that allows one person to do things without consent from the other participants. Maybe that's just me, but I doubt it.

The chapter's actual contents begin with a rambling screed about how there are gays on TV now, so RPGs need to accept that there are people into bondage. Or something. It's like someone is trying to make a case about how they are pro-kink and waging the culture war on a particular front and believe themselves to be on the winning side of history, but they are unwilling to actually say that. It's all hidden behind weasel words and innuendo, which is not a good place for a manifesto, declaration of intent, and call to action to be. The segment peters out with a lame excuse that some of the pieces might appeal more to player characters who aren't "combat monsters".

Then there is a piece on "handling sex in a mature way", which gets completely sidetracked by explaining how there is in fact nothing actually wrong with making dick jokes. This is followed by an essay about "sex in roleplaying", which is nominally about how the amount of description you give to a sexual encounter is as plausibly varied as the amount of description you give to any other kind of encounter (decent example of how you might or might not want to go into graphic detail about killing an Orc), but it gets sidetracked into ranting about hack-and-slash games. Really, I just think that they should have 100% shut the fuck up about hack and slash gaming. The book is supposed to be "The Book of Erotic Fantasy", not "The Book of how we are somewhat annoyed that D&D has so many combat encounters in it".

Then there's a half-pager about romance (short version: "You might want to have love in games") that covers no new ground. Then another essay about dick jokes (short version: "The authors have considered dick jokes, and have determined that they can be funny"). And there's a text box that suggests using the North American Movie rating system to describe games in terms of sexual content (G to XXX). Interestingly, the descriptions don't actually line up with the definitions of those ratings terribly well and they include the "XXX" rating that does not exist, but omit the PG-13 rating that totally does. There's a bit on Consent, but I really think it should have come earlier and covered way more ground. It's basically just summed up in the last sentence "The Book of Erotic Fantasy does not condone non-consensual sex in any manner." Which basically comes off as a legal disclaimer rather than an informed ethical position.

They then engage in several essays back to back about how various people have different sexual orientations, but gay people still eat Cheerios and also poop. Gays, fetishists, prostitutes, and pornographers all get their own mini-essay. But really it just comes down to a frank acknowledgement that they exist and an assurance that they are still human beings and as such can be expected to eat Cheerios and also poop. It's a fairly weak set of proclamations in favor of tolerance and an equally weak set of seeds from which to try to grow a character, story, or campaign is what I'm saying.

I think I should point out at this point that this book uses several different heading styles. This actually makes it a little difficult to read at times because several are in a flowery font and differ only slightly in font size. As a consequence of this, I walked into something I thought was going to be an essay about "The Consequences of Love and Sex", but that turned out to be only half a paragraph, because it was actually a sub-chapter header to collect mini-essays about marriage, infidelity, pregnancy, STDs, and chastity (yes, really. It is actually as totally out of place in this sub-chapter as you'd think it would be). These mini-essays are shockingly boring and don't really hold together that well, probably because the justification for their grouping is so thin that you can see the bottom of the cup.

The next collection of mini-essays holds together much better. It's about Sexual Taboos. Although the heading font is so annoying that at first I thought it was about "Sessual Caboos", which didn't really make any sense to me until the 12-point Times New Roman of the main text body came to save me. This section is, frankly, terrible. It tries to tell you that bestiality and child molestation are "universal" taboos, but this book also has an essay about centaur sex and this page has a bit on how different societies have different rites of passage to determine who is an adult and who is a child. It's just so tone deaf that it's deeply aggravating. Someone needed to consult an actual fucking Anthropologist. If you're going to talk about taboos at all, it just doesn't even make sense to try to use non-technical terms for it. Folkways, Mores, Taboos, Laws: this isn't even fucking hard. Failing to set the discussion in those terms makes the entire series of essays internally inconsistent, structurally incoherent, and morally suspect. Telling me that "repression sometimes takes the form of law" means that you have absolutely no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

There's more on Marriage, which probably should have been in the earlier section on Marriage. But it wasn't. I suspect that chapter 1 was compiled from the works of several authors because of the way it bounces back and forth between topics and contradicts itself constantly. Although it does get bonus points for correctly using the word "Theogamous". Also the lists of different types and durations of marriages is, while no means exhaustive, still surprisingly helpful.

There follows the part of the book which probably deserves the most mocking: the "Sex and Alignments" chapter. Oh my goodness, this is terrible. Each alignment is given default sex attitudes. Apparently, Good characters hump people that they love, while Lawful Evil characters give their ass up to people above them and be sure to have the molestations trickle down, and Chaotic Evil characters simply rape kittens.
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This is livened up by having little in media res fiction pieces about people exemplifying their proper alignment hookups, and then writing up actual character sheets for the characters described therein. The Paladin who makes sure to warn her potential hookups about when she is leaving town before they commit to banging her is apparently fifteenth level. I don't know whether to be happy or sad that they don't bother to stat up the Chaotic Evil kitten raper, but I do know that I need another drink.

Now we come to the money of this chapter: an amazingly hit and miss set of essays about various races and their attitudes towards sex. Some of this is pretty entertaining. Some of it is stupid, offensive, and given the subject matter of the mini-chapter (race and sex): perhaps unsurprisingly racist and offensive. It starts with the PC races, which is wall licking bullshit because it ends up giving an essay about half-orcs, half-elves, and humans, which is totally in addition to the essays about elves and orcs. This is just a waste of space. You can also tell that there is some stuff missing, as the first sentence of Dwarves (themselves the first section of this mini-chapter) tells you that they are usually "homospecies", a term that hasn't been defined but obviously should have been back when they were talking about cultural norms. Bonus points for basically defining Gnomes as Tinker Gnomes and then going off on a rant about Gnomish Kama Sutra.

The non-PHB races that get covered are fairly weird. So weird that I'm just going to list them right now:
  • Centaur
  • Doppelganger
  • Dryad
  • Felid (some sort of cat-girl template from this book)
  • Giants (includes Ogres, Trolls, and Ettins for some reason!)
  • Giantborn (an unplayable template from this book where you get to grow to large size at level 5 because of your giant heritage, but you won't get there because you have a LA of +2).
  • Gnolls (mentions the bigger, tougher females, does not mention their pseudo-penises)
  • Goblinoids (Bugbears and Hobgoblins get separate writeups for pregnancy, but not for sexual attitudes, which is weird considering the difference this book suggests for Lawful and Chaotic Evil)
  • Kobolds
  • Lizardfolk
  • Merfolk & Tritons (I don't know why these are classified together considering how different they are in D&D)
  • Minotaurs.
  • Nymphs
  • Orcs and Ogres (yes, Ogres were mentioned under Giants, and in D&D they are related to Goblins, not to Orcs. The book explicitly thinks that Orcs are a kind of Goblinoid, which could have been cleared up with about 2 minutes reading the Monster Manual before writing this 190 page book)
  • Satyrs
  • Serpentines (because Yuan Ti are not in the SRD and we wouldn't want to get sued)
  • Sprites
I can follow the logic for some of that. Some of it is even pretty entertaining, like the rant about the loveless osmotic coupling of Doppelgangers. But if we're going to write up an outsider, wouldn't it make more sense to do the Succubus than the Triton? Why are we talking about Ettin and Troll sex when we still have basic humanoids and monstrous humanoids without an entry (Troglodyte, Sahuagin, Kuo-Toa, Locathah, derro, gargoyle, grimlock, hags, harpy, medusa)? There's a little sidebar where they inform you that they aren't going to discuss pedophilia (too late, it's already in the damn Taboos guide), bestiality (which they seem to mean sex between sapients and non-sapients, but really isn't explicitly defined), and necrophilia (explicitly defined as having sex with corpses or unintelligent undead). This is the kind of thing that really should come way earlier in the book.

Then they do short essays for all the creature types. This is more incoherent. It starts with an essay about how "aberrations" view sex, and that's stupid because aberrations are defined by not being remotely similar to each other. Even wasting space on the animal, plant, ooze, and vermin types is tautologically a waste of space in this book. But it's somehow made worse by the fact that they get basic facts wrong (such as claiming that plants are asexual and do not need sex, what do you think fruit and pollen are?).

And, finally, we're done with Chapter One. It's 38 pages, and about three glasses of medium-hard liquor.

Chapter 2: Rules, Skills, & Feats

The splash are at the front of this chapter isn't actually bad. It's available online (sort of), so I might as well just post it.
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I genuinely don't know what is supposed to be "erotic" about that. It seems like pretty standard fantasy art, albeit at least slightly unusual in that it is a modified photo. I do not know if she is an Elf fighter or a Halfling fighter.

Whatever. The chapter then reminds you about Rule Zero again, which I find at this point to be actually insulting. The rules are not off to a strong start in that the first major suggestion is to split Charisma into two stats (Charisma and Appearance). Apparently because they think that Charisma is too strong and useful of a stat in 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons. This isn't a minor optional rule or anything, the entire rest of the book talks about the Appearance stat as if it's something other than a stupid idea. There's a couple of pages given over to using Appearance with various skills, and assigning Appearance values to different creature types. Apparently Elves have a "universal appeal" and don't suffer an appearance penalty when interacting with other races. I don't even know how that is supposed to work.

There is a much needed tirade about how having a giant schlong does not by itself give you bonuses to anything. It suggests that people should take actual skill points and throw them down the hole that is "Perform (Sexual Techniques)". I am not making that up. The penalty for having sex with a creature of a different size category is only -4 per size difference, and the penalty for making it with another species is only -2, so successfully putting out for Godzilla is well within the capabilities of a mid-level Bard. There are charts and tables to determine how long you can fuck, and apparently this man just made a DC 35 Con check:
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But don't worry, you can now use Appraise to try to figure out if people can do that. Most of the new uses for skills are stupid. Craft Bondage Gear is, I feel, rather wasted space. D&D just doesn't have a skill point system that is robust or sensitive enough to distinguish someone who can make bondage gear from someone who can make a camel harness. It's the same fucking skill. Or it least, it fucking better be considering that I only get 2 skill points as a Fighter.

After the skill rundown, it gives a thing on sexually transmitted diseases, possibly because of a jovial contempt for putting character generation options in one place (feats are later). There are some lame puns (azure balls, that gives you immobilizing blue balls), and some just plain weird bits (there is a disease that slowly drains your strength but makes your vagina leak paralytic poison), but these diseases are no weirder or stupider than the ones in Book of Vile Darkness or Book of Exalted Deeds. It also points out that you can catch Ghoul Fever and Lycanthropy from semen and vaginal secretions, which I guess is good to know.
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There is a free-hanging rule for "fetishes", which in game terms is that if you don't do whatever your fetish is, you get -4 to your sexing tests. That seems like it should have been inside the rules for making sex tests in the first place, but it is not. There are also rules for trying to adventure while pregnant. It's kind of like being exhausted all the time, so I can't suggest doing it. But it matters to mounted spellcasters surprisingly little. Following that, there's a thing on birth control methods wherein the authors clearly looked at birth control success rate statistics and then didn't read the fine print that those numbers are supposed to be for a year of use. So your chances of getting pregnant are an order of magnitude higher than in reality. It's fantasy. Fantasy where you get knocked up way easier. And then the crossbreeding chart. That probably needs its own paragraph.

The crossbreeding chart is, to put it mildly: totally bugfuck insane. Dryads can mate with anything... except Lizardfolk. Why? I have no idea. The book also continues to insist that Orcs and Goblins can interbreed, despite the fact that Orcs are not Goblinoids and can interbreed with humans. It also insists on telling me that you can have centaur/satyr offspring, merfolk/elf offspring, ogre/gnoll offspring and minotaur/ettin offspring, which doesn't even. Gnome/Troll offspring we are informed is impossible, which seems like someone either never read the AD&D Monster Manual or wasn't willing to go there for the reference even on a chart that was this bugfuck insane to begin with. They won't let you make Muls, but you can make half-giants, so Darksun is only fifty percent told to go find somewhere else to fuck. For a chart this big (it is the entire page), I would really want it be set to the basic D&D setting, or at least have modifications written to cover normal campaign settings. As it is, it's set up to reference the author's crazy campaign setting that apparently has half-centaurs and Mer-ettins.

Then we get to the other half of the chargen options, which have been bifurcated by all this santorum: The Feats. By and large, you do not want these feats. Most of them are various inconsequential variants of Skill Focus or the crazy hook-up for two skills feats. You can, for example: get a feat for +2 on Intimidate checks that doubles to +4 to intimidate if you are sexually intimidating people. Which sounds like not the sort of thing you'd want to encourage at the table, but is in any case fairly inconsequentially distinct from Skill Focus (Intimidate). There are feats that are somewhat overpowered while being bad for the game, like Chaste Life that gives you +2 to an ability score of your choice but makes you lose the actual feat if you get any sex action ever.

Coming soon: Chapter 3, wherein they write new classes.

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Re: OSSR: Book of Erotic Fantasy

Post by JigokuBosatsu »

I don't get to say this ever, but Frank...
FrankTrollman wrote: If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one would be worth "This is terrible" printed three hundred and thirty three times.
Your math is slightly off.

(Unless there is an unspoken FUUUUUUUUCK at the end.)
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JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?
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Post by Shrapnel »

Will you be posting the NSFW erotic images? That'd make the review so awesome.

edit: Actually, judging from the review itself, I say "never mind".
Last edited by Shrapnel on Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:01 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: OSSR: Book of Erotic Fantasy

Post by rasmuswagner »

FrankTrollman wrote:If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one would be worth "This is terrible" printed three hundred and thirty three times.
-Username17
You, sir, are a poet of the highest order, and I raise my glass to you.
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Post by Tumbling Down »

FrankTrollman wrote:[...]it is actually made in WotC's literal back yard with a shockingly large group of participants, and it is quite probable that some of the people working on this project were known by some of the people working at WotC.
Well, if I'm not misremembering, Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel is (or was) Andy Collins' fiancé and used to work for WotC.

She's certainly credited with editing/devolpment for such books as the ELH, MoF and CPsi.
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Re: OSSR: Book of Erotic Fantasy

Post by Grek »

rasmuswagner wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one would be worth "This is terrible" printed three hundred and thirty three times.
-Username17
You, sir, are a poet of the highest order, and I raise my glass to you.
Seriously. That is art right there.
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Post by Shrapnel »

Concurred.
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Post by Username17 »

Chapter 3: Base & Prestige Classes

We're on to Chapter 3, which is about Character Classes. It breaks for by showing no nipples in the intro art and having a lead-in that doesn;t remind you that Rule Zero is a thing. Still, we're talking about early 3.5 character classes, so I'm going to be drinking something flammable.

This chapter pretty much jumps into it. There are three base classes who are all bad ideas. There's the Imagist (a Sorcerer who casts with their Appearance stat), the Kundala (a Monk who is literally powered by sucking), and the Tantrist (a Wizard who gets Domains instead of a specialist school but has MAD that is described different ways every time it is mentioned, which by my count makes it like 4. But it's Int/Con MAD so you don't care). The Tantrist is actually fairly powerful, in that he is a fucking Wizard. Not much to say there really, save that it is completely incomprehensible what your stats actually do. The Kundala is the opposite: completely worthless because it is a Monk. All of their sexual gifts mean nothing because they are still a 3rd edition Monk. It's even provided a reasonably attractive naked meditating woman picture, and that still doesn't help because it's still a Monk.

The Imagist is I think the place where things really fall down. They are obsessed with beautifying the world and want to kill all the ugly things, and they are not allowed to be Evil. This strikes me as a gross violation of genre. Here you have a sorceress who is literally powered by vanity and she can't be the villain? What the fuck? Other than that, you get a cohort at level 3 (which somewhat makes up for the fact that you are a fucking Sorcerer and don't have 2nd level spells), and your own weird spell list. However, the spell list sucks (it is mostly drawn from Cleric spells), and the class is shit. But it could have been a lot better. Not enough better to justify having an Appearance Stat on your damn sheet, but better than what it is.

Then they go into Prestige Classes. These are by and large not classes you will be able to use anywhere. For reasons that I don't really understand, they decided to make up their own gods and stuff for this work. I understand that they were forbidden by threat of lawsuit from using Hasbro trademarks, and thus couldn't put the word "Pelor" on anything, but I would think it would make more sense to just genericize things. You know, talk about "The Sun God", or "The Goddess of Pain" rather than mentioning Pelor or Loviatar specifically (not that they can stop you from mentioning Loviatar because Finland). Instead, they have bullshit gods like Aaluran (pronouned "allurin" I believe, cue eye rolls). No one gives a shit about this goddess. No one is going to put this goddess into their campaign world. For fuck's sake, her name is an actual pun! If they decided to go for the "wacky puns" Xanth style of creepy eroticism, I wish they'd gone whole hog.
Image

The actual classes themselves are the usual fare. You have classes that give full spellcasting and are thus overpowered because they give you anything at all on top of that (even if it is a bonus feat from a list that is short and bullshit and also cluttered with feats that are prereqs for the class in the first place). And you have crap that is supposed to make you a Paladin with a Unicorn mount that sucks. And by "sucks" I mean "isn't very good", which is I suppose something that I need to distinguish when reviewing this book. And of course, you have the old standby of worthlessness: the half spellcasting class. Who ever thought those were a good idea? You fall a level behind every other level, it's garbage.

I just want to take a bit of time off from yelling about things like how the class that makes you a Dominatrix, and would be modestly OK because it's a full spellcasting class that gives you bullshit flavor abilities every level, is actually totally unworkable because it requires that you take six months off of adventuring in order to go train in a sex dungeon before you can take it and thus the class might as well not exist in most campaigns even if they nominally allowed it. I am taking this time off to note that the "Harem Protector", while just as worthless as you would expect him to be (being as he is a Fighter PrC whose actual job is guarding the Wizard's numerous bitches) has a class feature called "No Sex Drive". Really. That's a class feature. And he has it. Well, sort of. It's actually called "Eunuchs" in the text body, but it's called "No Sex Drive" in the class table. The class section isn't very well organized is I think what I am saying.

I know that the "Knot Binder of Kaladis" is actually a spellcaster whose shtick is that he marries people to other people, but I find it actually pretty weird that he doesn't get Use Rope as a skill. Also, the Pierced Mystic is in addition to being a fairly strict powerup for wizards, also coming with a half page bit of box text about how there are a lot of places on the body you can put piercings and then name some of them. These guys like nipple studs almost as much as the Book of Vile Darkness. The whole point is so that you can replace your belt slot with a penis ring if you want. As it happens, I do not. And I don't even wear a belt.

Special props go to making a Voyeuristic Seer prestige class. Basically, you're just a diviner who specializes in Scry (the "& Die" is, I think, implied). But the flavor text is that you're also a pervert. More Prestige Classes should be like this. But in any case, that's the end of the chapter.

Chapter 4: Magic

The first thing they throw at you here is a shitty CG picture of an Orc warrior looking at a Tinkerbell who is obviously too minuscule to have conjugal anythings with. I don't know what the fuck that is supposed to be about. There is no fucking even implied. I am disappoint.

The Magic chapter starts with new Domains. These are mostly for the various sex fetishist Prestige Classes, but a few of them can be selected by the Tantrist. They are not off to a promising start, in that the very first Domain is one whose granted power is that it adds skills to your Cleric class list, but the Domain is only accessible as a Prestige Domain. Meaning that if you can take it, you are by definition taking levels in a class that isn't Cleric and adding skills to the Cleric class list at that point is something something about cows and barn doors.

The main attraction of this chapter is of course the spells. There are a lot of new spells, and most of them are garbage. However, like every 3rd party supplement that has a lot of spells in it, there are ones in here that make you win D&D. There is a 3rd level Bard spell that gives you a +5d4 enhancement bonus to Charisma for one hour per level. Yes, by 9th level it lasts long enough to prepare spells during without even being extended (although before 10th level, it is only +4d4). That's empowerable, and the average increase to your Charisma bonus is +9 if you do that. Which makes the Charm Monster you cast after that go off with total power. It also gives you bonuses to sex tests, but who gives a fuck when you're busy winning D&D?

Then there are spells that are just poorly written. Cursed Orgasm makes the target suffer d6/level damage the next time they orgasm. But it also has a duration of "1 orgasm/level". And it's a touch spell that is apparently totally obvious (requiring you toss acid jizz around as a material component), so it seems fairly useless as an assassination spell.

There are even spells that you would want to have that you might be able to convince the DM to let you have - especially if they didn't come from a book called "Book of Erotic Fantasy". There's a 6th level Wizard spell that restores someone to life if they died within the last couple of rounds and requires you to kiss them. Totally sweet because for all its numerous disadvantages it hands out a negative level instead of a lost level. There's a thing that lets you make a gate network out of mirrors. And so on. The book is very light on spells that fucking kill people, and if you wanted to be effective in combat (rather than breaking the game in half with DC increasing fuckery), you'd give this book a pass.

The last part of this chapter is full of tirades about how various spells in the SRD might be useful if you were a pervert. Much of this is simply stupid (did you know you can use Scrying to look into the girls' locker room? Well you fucking can! It says so right here!), and some of it is outright wrong (there is nearly a page given over to ranting about the implications of using polymorph to impregnate people, even though anything removed from your body reverts to its original form and thus you cannot impregnate anyone with polymorph under any circumstances). But the 2/3 of a page they give to discussing how places might have laws against using charm spells to get people to agree to blow jobs isn't out of place.

And that's the chapter. More tomorrow.

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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Bah, the gnoll female's pseudo-penis is literally the best part and they forgot.

My game had a "perform: wenching" skill. It covered performance, seduction, etc. It was a joke, until every character put points in it.
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Post by K »

It's probably worth noting that the Metaphysical Shaper PrC is completely out of place. It has nothing to do with sex or couples or anything vaguely erotic.

This only proves that even pervert designers can't resist putting their personal cheese-class into a supplement.

It should also be noted that the Disrobe spell has a hidden application, namely removing non-magic holy symbols from divine spellcasters and non-magic focuses and material components from any caster with no save and no SR. It's a second-level spell, so I could see using that at a level where I could quicken it to hilarious effect from both a strategy and RP standpoint.

The rest of the spells are designed as flavor or designed without knowing the rules. For example, orgasmic vibrations lists a Concentration DC to cast spells while under the effect of the spell, somehow not realizing that being under the dazed condition means that you can't cast spells anyway because you can't take actions. They might have meant that you also have a chance to not cast spells if you make the save and aren't dazed, but it's not really written like that and would be really powerful if that was the case..
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Post by ishy »

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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Lmao. I haven't read FFN for years, but isn't Frank usually the voice of reason? (not trollman, the DM in FFN).
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Post by Koumei »

There's a spell that makes a healing bubble follow you around or something. A friend of mine really wanted to use it, but the DM said "It's from that sex book so no" before giving a green flag to something someone wanted from a Mongoose book... without even looking at it.

Also, there's a web book out there somewhere, all free (legally) and stuff, that was specifically made as "We think the BoEF is too stupid/badly written/unpowered/tame". GUCK (Guide to Unlawful Carnal Knowledge). It's still stupid and awful, but I'll note that:
[*]It doesn't add a new stat to make Charisma worse (though fucking is a skill, probably Con-based with a feat to tie it to Charisma, I forget)
[*]It has special Sexual Proficiencies (1 per rank), with a crippling -4 to your check if you try to suck someone off without proficiency. Note that using a dildo and using the handle of a hand mirror are completely different things.
[*]It has special "Sexual Arts" feats that grant you a variety of scaling benefits, 1 per ability score - the Strength one actually gives you a constrict attack you can use in normal non-sex combat.
[*]It has some actually good spells
[*]It has an amazing feat for Cha-based casters. Sure, you have to set two feats on fire first, but the benefit is "Add your Charisma Bonus to your AC. If you are nude or effectively nude (the good bits show), enemies also get a penalty to attack rolls against you equal to your Charisma Bonus." Yes, that's the same as saying Cha*2 is added to your AC. Your naked Sorcerer is dancing around with something like +10 to AC that can't be disarmed/disjoined and tells touch attacks to fuck off.
K wrote:It should also be noted that the Disrobe spell has a hidden application, namely removing non-magic holy symbols from divine spellcasters and non-magic focuses and material components from any caster with no save and no SR. It's a second-level spell, so I could see using that at a level where I could quicken it to hilarious effect from both a strategy and RP standpoint.
I've used it in a Spell Trap + Monster one-two combo to great effect. A glyph on the floor makes their clothes fall off. Luckily there is a cloak nearby on a coatrack! How thoughtful!

Yes, the rogue's clothes fell off, so the gallant paladin threw a cloaker onto her and I guess what I'm saying is the party actually ended up having to withdraw to heal up properly after a blinded/grappled rogue ran screaming and triggered arrow traps on the rest of the party and stabbing the cloaker in the face half-killed the rogue and... yeah. I don't always use traps, but when I do, everyone agrees they're hilarious. And I don't even know the origins of that "I don't always" meme.

Looking forward to the rest, and also to when I get home and see the hilarious pictures used. The bit following "Chaotic Evil fucks kittens" had better be "A cat is fine too".
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Koumei wrote:Also, there's a web book out there somewhere, all free (legally) and stuff, that was specifically made as "We think the BoEF is too stupid/badly written/unpowered/tame". GUCK (Guide to Unlawful Carnal Knowledge).
Given that GUCK was originally an AD&D fanbook (1996), I don't think your explanation of the motivation of its creators is accurate.

There was (is?) a project to try to update it to 3e. AFAIK, nobody tried to update it to 4e.
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Post by Koumei »

RadiantPhoenix wrote:AFAIK, nobody tried to update it to 4e.
Who would want to mix 4E with sex?
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Koumei wrote: [*]It has special Sexual Proficiencies (1 per rank), with a crippling -4 to your check if you try to suck someone off without proficiency. Note that using a dildo and using the handle of a hand mirror are completely different things.
Sounds about right. At least when it comes to male parts. Oral on women is a lot easier, all you need to do is have a basic understanding of how the parts work and to pay attention. Male parts require you to be part python...
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Post by Orion »

Koumei wrote:
RadiantPhoenix wrote:AFAIK, nobody tried to update it to 4e.
Who would want to mix 4E with sex?
You could probably do some kind of dark satire on the banality of people's sex lives? Only having 2 at-will sex moves, plus a daily, sounds like a steretypical sad suburban couple or bad college hookup.

EDIT: Actually, if you got the numbers right you could probably run it as a skill challenge. Assuming you're not sexing as a group, you solve the problems around weaker characters contributing failures.
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Post by Koumei »

At least it'd last for a good long session, I guess.
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Post by Doom »

Koumei wrote:
Who would want to mix 4E with sex?
Hey, with typical encounters taking 2.5 hours, I can see folks might be interested.

I was at the GenCon where this guy showed up to hawk the book. He came (heh heh, heh heh) with two heavily tattooed, screendoorly pierced, scantily clad femmes who basically just drew stares.

I seriously thought about buying the book.

The next day, I went by the booth (as much to reconsider the book as to gawk a bit), and it was emptied...he was totally hustled out of GenCon.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Doom wrote:
Hey, with typical encounters taking 2.5 hours, I can see folks might be interested.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
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Post by Orion »

I think most of us have encountered that one woman that felt like grinding down a Solo monster.
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Post by OgreBattle »

On the trolls, do they mention how their regenerative abilities would affect their anal circumference? I would imagine it means they'd never get loose, tear its ass up as hard as you can and it'll always tighten by 5 hitpoints every 6 seconds. Say you're buggering a troll and a wizard grows you to colossal size, it's regenerative capability would mean you gain a living, troll-faced condom, jut avoid sticking it in fire or acid.


Any mention of mindflayers? Or mindfucking people? Or a mindflayer variant that sucks more than just brains? Howabout Gibbering Mouthers?
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Orion wrote:I think most of us have encountered that one woman that felt like grinding down a Solo monster.
I have been told that I'm the solo monster.

Ogrebattle: You're confusing the book of erotic fantasy with FATAL.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote: Ogrebattle: You're confusing the book of erotic fantasy with FATAL.
I have so much love to give.


btw, anyone know which book had that picture of the Halfling rogue on her knees with sticky white stuff on her face (she set a trap off), and then some kobolds are approaching her from behind? It's official, non-erotic artwork with the Iconic Rogue.

all I've found is "halfling rogue with mouth agape, gripping rod that shot a load into her face"

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Post by Koumei »

Mind Flayers are owned by WotC so can't be mentioned in the BoEF. And Ogre, all I have to offer of said rogue (Lidda) is a picture of her getting ready to stuff a valuable statue up her arse.

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Okay maybe she's just comparing a design on it to a drunken tattoo on her side.
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