Sages & Specialists

Sages & Specialists is a reference book for Dungeon Masters detailing non-player character classes of all types. This 128-page, softbound book covers 11 different commonly found peoples which players are likely to attempt to consult at some point during a typical campaign, including apothecaries, appraisers, blacksmiths, cartographers, engineers, guides, healers, historians, scribes and seers. Even though these character types are not intended to be played as PCs, each one can be used to create a character and has a set of skills and abilities which can be assigned during the creation process just like the PC types available for the AD&D system. And, like other character classes, these specialist classes can advance in level, gaining new abilities as they increase in experience.[1]

Paul Pettengale reviewed Sages & Specialists for Arcane magazine, rating it a 6 out of 10 overall.[1] Pettengale concludes: "While the idea behind Sages and Specialists is a sound one, and it's now useful to know exactly what tricks these character types can get up to (and at what skill level), it strikes me that the ref is rarely going to use this information - most of it is common sense, besides which, the precise abilities of a sage of three years' experience should be flexible; a whole scenario shouldn't be wrecked because a sage can't be privy to certain information at his current level. So, fine in theory, but in practice I have a few doubts about the usefulness of this addition to the AD&D rules set."[1]