Races of the Wild

This sourcebook feels very “basic”. It could be impressive to newcomers but most of it feels known to me already.

It follows the standard “Races” approach and starts off with elves then halflings, then the new raptorans. Elves and halflings are what you'd expect from a flavour point of view, although halflings essentially became gypsies.

Raptorans are really poorly designed. Compared to goliaths from Races of Stone, raptorans felt amateurish. They're like rugged winged elves and full of contrasting nonsensical behaviour. They're hunters living in small communities that prize efficiency, yet they like to indulge in debates for the sake of it? The name is the other laughing matter. You would think they're fearsome in the air, but probably due to balance issues, until you're high level, raptorans can only glide for a couple of rounds. While they tried to give a reason for why raptorans would go on adventures, it just doesn't fit mechanically. With the way it's described, raptorans as a race would've had a large number of high level members, way out of the proportion for other races.

Minority races are catfolk, gnoll, centaur, and a new killoren race. These were more interesting compared to raptorans, even though three of them have appeared elsewhere.

The rest of the stuff is pretty mundane and uninspired. A couple of prestige classes, wood-version armors, elven variants of swords, a more powerful sling and bullet, a couple of spells, plus a raptoran pantheon. Throw in some campaign hooks and that sums it up. The artwork was also rather poor.

In short, it doesn't have much to offer if you're already familiar with elves, halflings, and other woodland races. It's a very “basic” sourcebook.