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Thri-Kreen of Athas
From hatching to hunting to coming of age, the secrets of the thri-kreen are revealed. From their formidable combat abilities to the subtleties of their psionic powers, this accessory explores every aspect of thri-kreen life. New rules and new character kits and a special adventure for thri-kreen characters, The Taste of Fear.
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 5, 2014
I've always been fond of the thri-kreen. Playable insect warriors? Awesome! Sure, they're transparently a ripoff of the Phraint from The Arduin Grimoire and since they have mandibles instead of teeth they can't pronounce their own name, but their presentation manages to rise above that for me. So when this book first came out back in the day, I snapped it up.
Unfortunately, I never liked it as much as Elves of Athas because I don't think it does a very good job of portraying the kreen as alien at all. I would have expected pack-dwelling insect warriors to have very odd mindsets, and they don't.
The book talks about the huntmind and the clutchmind, and how much the two of them shape thri-kreen existence, but the way they're described, they're mostly just cultural quirks. The huntmind means that thri-kreen are thinking all the time about hunting, and are constantly preparing for hunting or resting from hunting. But the thri-kreen are hunter-gatherers--or rather just hunters, since they're carnivorous and most plants just make them ill. Subsistence hunters in a blasted desert hellscape are constantly thinking about hunting? Quelle surprise.
The only interesting part of the huntmind is that thri-kreen treat trading as a ritualized hunt, with the buyer as the hunter and the seller as the prey, and sometimes a seller will jump the gun and offer to trade something that they think the buyer wants for something the buyer has, so they can take the hunter position. But then the book undermines it by assigning no mechanical weight to this in the barter rules and saying that there is no stigma to either position so none of it matters anyway.
The clutchmind has the potential to be more interesting, but there isn't much done with it. There's no mechanics attached, thri-kreen can be members of multiple clutches at the same time, and there's no guidance about what happens when clutches conflict. Okay, so thri-kreen have a strict dominance hierarchy within their clutches and will obey orders from higher-placed members without complaint, but what happens if a thri-kreen in overlapping clutches is given contradictory orders by kreen in two different clutches? How do they resolve this? That's a great avenue for drama and it's not even mentioned.
Not to mention that clutches are essentially a social construct and not biological at all. For example, all thri-kreen of Urik basically join the "Clutch of Urik" as part of city policy when they arrive, which makes me wonder if Hamanu is constantly having to fight off dominance challenges. This obviously artificial clutch isn't a problem to the thri-kreen mind at all.
There's some brief mentions of how thri-kreen don't sleep, their words for "sleep" and "death" are very similar, and they tend to think other races are all lazy since they waste so much of the day, but again, the concept isn't developed beyond that. The "insect mindset" is a cloudy pool that's only ankle-deep.
I did like how Thri-Kreen of Athas deals with the thri-kreen taste for elves, when it points out that it's mostly isolated incidents. After all, hunting intelligent prey is extremely dangerous for little gain, and considering how well-adapted the thri-kreen are for desert hunting, if they really preferred elf to all other meals, elves would be extinct.
Racial memory seems mostly to be used as an excuse for why thri-kreen gain abilities as they level up ("I can dodge missiles now! Because reasons!") but actually has the potential to be pretty neat, though it's almost entirely in the GM's hands. It's mostly triggered by life stages or events, but other than the examples in the adventure in the back, there isn't much guidance about how to use them.
Speaking of the adventure, if I were rating it by itself, it'd get two stars. Maybe one and a half. It's pretty much designed to showcase the new metaplot, and I've made my stance on the Dark Sun metaplot pretty clear in my reviews. The concept of a mighty kreen Empire north of the Jagged Cliffs is awesome, but they're a bit too overwhelming--Thaythilor is described as "fairly small" at 10,000, which is more than the population of Gulg and almost more than Tyr--and their advance is tied to the Great Earthquake and the almost-freeing of Rajaat and all that rot. Also, the adventure is mostly just thri-kreen PCs being hit with bursts of racial memory, non-kreen having no idea what's going on, and a race against time to stop something that the PCs have no reason to care about other than the GM hammering that they must(!).
The mechanics in the book aren't much better. I've already mentioned how much is mechanically null, and the remaining mechanics are badly implemented. For example, chatkcha specialists are the new dart-chucking fighters, able to throw up to 5 per round at high levels for 1d6+2 base damage each. Thri-kreen natural attacks get no benefit from strength bonuses because ????? Punching and wrestling get strength bonuses, but apparently claws don't? I know the real reason is because five attacks per round at Strength 20 is a minimum of 45 damage and that's exactly why I made a thri-kreen fighter/psionicist in Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and he was just as much of a cuisinart as one would expect, but what's good for the humanoid is good for the insectile killing machine.
The kits are all boring role-based kits. I don't even mean like Guardian of the Shrine from Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, I mean like "hunter" or "raider." Raider's mechanics are basically "You have no benefits and everyone hates you." Why is this in here?
A disappointing look into one of Dark Sun's more interesting playable groups.
Unfortunately, I never liked it as much as Elves of Athas because I don't think it does a very good job of portraying the kreen as alien at all. I would have expected pack-dwelling insect warriors to have very odd mindsets, and they don't.
The book talks about the huntmind and the clutchmind, and how much the two of them shape thri-kreen existence, but the way they're described, they're mostly just cultural quirks. The huntmind means that thri-kreen are thinking all the time about hunting, and are constantly preparing for hunting or resting from hunting. But the thri-kreen are hunter-gatherers--or rather just hunters, since they're carnivorous and most plants just make them ill. Subsistence hunters in a blasted desert hellscape are constantly thinking about hunting? Quelle surprise.
The only interesting part of the huntmind is that thri-kreen treat trading as a ritualized hunt, with the buyer as the hunter and the seller as the prey, and sometimes a seller will jump the gun and offer to trade something that they think the buyer wants for something the buyer has, so they can take the hunter position. But then the book undermines it by assigning no mechanical weight to this in the barter rules and saying that there is no stigma to either position so none of it matters anyway.
The clutchmind has the potential to be more interesting, but there isn't much done with it. There's no mechanics attached, thri-kreen can be members of multiple clutches at the same time, and there's no guidance about what happens when clutches conflict. Okay, so thri-kreen have a strict dominance hierarchy within their clutches and will obey orders from higher-placed members without complaint, but what happens if a thri-kreen in overlapping clutches is given contradictory orders by kreen in two different clutches? How do they resolve this? That's a great avenue for drama and it's not even mentioned.
Not to mention that clutches are essentially a social construct and not biological at all. For example, all thri-kreen of Urik basically join the "Clutch of Urik" as part of city policy when they arrive, which makes me wonder if Hamanu is constantly having to fight off dominance challenges. This obviously artificial clutch isn't a problem to the thri-kreen mind at all.
There's some brief mentions of how thri-kreen don't sleep, their words for "sleep" and "death" are very similar, and they tend to think other races are all lazy since they waste so much of the day, but again, the concept isn't developed beyond that. The "insect mindset" is a cloudy pool that's only ankle-deep.
I did like how Thri-Kreen of Athas deals with the thri-kreen taste for elves, when it points out that it's mostly isolated incidents. After all, hunting intelligent prey is extremely dangerous for little gain, and considering how well-adapted the thri-kreen are for desert hunting, if they really preferred elf to all other meals, elves would be extinct.
Racial memory seems mostly to be used as an excuse for why thri-kreen gain abilities as they level up ("I can dodge missiles now! Because reasons!") but actually has the potential to be pretty neat, though it's almost entirely in the GM's hands. It's mostly triggered by life stages or events, but other than the examples in the adventure in the back, there isn't much guidance about how to use them.
Speaking of the adventure, if I were rating it by itself, it'd get two stars. Maybe one and a half. It's pretty much designed to showcase the new metaplot, and I've made my stance on the Dark Sun metaplot pretty clear in my reviews. The concept of a mighty kreen Empire north of the Jagged Cliffs is awesome, but they're a bit too overwhelming--Thaythilor is described as "fairly small" at 10,000, which is more than the population of Gulg and almost more than Tyr--and their advance is tied to the Great Earthquake and the almost-freeing of Rajaat and all that rot. Also, the adventure is mostly just thri-kreen PCs being hit with bursts of racial memory, non-kreen having no idea what's going on, and a race against time to stop something that the PCs have no reason to care about other than the GM hammering that they must(!).
The mechanics in the book aren't much better. I've already mentioned how much is mechanically null, and the remaining mechanics are badly implemented. For example, chatkcha specialists are the new dart-chucking fighters, able to throw up to 5 per round at high levels for 1d6+2 base damage each. Thri-kreen natural attacks get no benefit from strength bonuses because ????? Punching and wrestling get strength bonuses, but apparently claws don't? I know the real reason is because five attacks per round at Strength 20 is a minimum of 45 damage and that's exactly why I made a thri-kreen fighter/psionicist in Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and he was just as much of a cuisinart as one would expect, but what's good for the humanoid is good for the insectile killing machine.
The kits are all boring role-based kits. I don't even mean like Guardian of the Shrine from Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, I mean like "hunter" or "raider." Raider's mechanics are basically "You have no benefits and everyone hates you." Why is this in here?
A disappointing look into one of Dark Sun's more interesting playable groups.
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July 15, 202226/32
Much like the Elves of Athas book was an expansion on the info presented in the core box set -- and also a refutation of the info in the Complete Book of Elves -- this book extends the core box set info on playing a thri-kreen, one of the mantis-like insect people. So there's non-mechanical info on the mindset, physiology, and culture of the thri-kreen, and then there's some mechanical chapters on (for instance), thri-kreen combat and skill-use and healing. But none of this is really ... ground-breaking or interesting to me.
Now this book also introduces the idea that there are different thri-kreen species in the Tyr region, and I kind of love the attention to insect anatomy, like "what do the breathing holes look like on different species?"
But the only part that really makes me sit up are the mentions of different thri-kreen nations beyond the Tyr region. There's some mention early on about the thri-kreen (nomadic) vs. tohr-kreen (settled) split, but it's only by page 78 or before we get a warning that what's about to come is really only for the DM, and then it's only about four pages of very thin setting detail, which is disappointing.
So what is this book really for? Well, the adventure at the end is all about how the PCs (including thri-kreen) meet some bigger and stranger kreen and then follow them back to a big rift (recently opened by an earthquake) and a wall that indicates the border of a new kreen empire -- but there's no info about that here. In fact, this adventure even notes that info on this will be coming in the new revised box set later in the year. So what is this adventure? It's really just a teaser for the next product.
I remember liking this book - I really like the thri-kreen as a playable race, and I appreciate (in theory) the work this book does to make them feel different but playable (which is to say, not that different). But skimming it now, it feels thin and uninteresting.
But if you want thin and uninteresting, check out the next product in the line-up.
Much like the Elves of Athas book was an expansion on the info presented in the core box set -- and also a refutation of the info in the Complete Book of Elves -- this book extends the core box set info on playing a thri-kreen, one of the mantis-like insect people. So there's non-mechanical info on the mindset, physiology, and culture of the thri-kreen, and then there's some mechanical chapters on (for instance), thri-kreen combat and skill-use and healing. But none of this is really ... ground-breaking or interesting to me.
Now this book also introduces the idea that there are different thri-kreen species in the Tyr region, and I kind of love the attention to insect anatomy, like "what do the breathing holes look like on different species?"
But the only part that really makes me sit up are the mentions of different thri-kreen nations beyond the Tyr region. There's some mention early on about the thri-kreen (nomadic) vs. tohr-kreen (settled) split, but it's only by page 78 or before we get a warning that what's about to come is really only for the DM, and then it's only about four pages of very thin setting detail, which is disappointing.
So what is this book really for? Well, the adventure at the end is all about how the PCs (including thri-kreen) meet some bigger and stranger kreen and then follow them back to a big rift (recently opened by an earthquake) and a wall that indicates the border of a new kreen empire -- but there's no info about that here. In fact, this adventure even notes that info on this will be coming in the new revised box set later in the year. So what is this adventure? It's really just a teaser for the next product.
I remember liking this book - I really like the thri-kreen as a playable race, and I appreciate (in theory) the work this book does to make them feel different but playable (which is to say, not that different). But skimming it now, it feels thin and uninteresting.
But if you want thin and uninteresting, check out the next product in the line-up.
November 27, 2019
An in-depht view of one of the most original races created for AD&D 2nd edition. This really shows this insectoid race as alien as it should be, but delves into their fantastic culture. Not every Dark Sun Campaign Setting DM will use all the details included here, though.
February 24, 2012
A how to book on how to play a incectiod in dnd.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews