If your campaign includes humans or cities, Races of Destiny can add incredible breadth and depth to it. Just what can this book tell you about those topics that you don't already know? A lot more than you may think. Below are ten reasons to pick up Races of Destiny, no matter what kind of campaign you run.

10. The Power of Faith: This book provides several ways to enhance the role of faith in your world's various cultures. From detailed discussions of human religions to initiate feats that open up new powers to clerics of specific faiths, Races of Destiny brings your world's religions to life.

9. Make the Half Races Whole: Half-elves and half-orcs often live quietly in the corners of campaign worlds. As individuals, they seldom gain the attention or political clout that other PC races do. With Races of Destiny, establishing solid identities for races that have no nations of their own becomes much easier. The book offers great tips and advice on how to make these races both more individual and more real to the campaign world.

8. Prestige Classes Like Never Before: Prestige classes have been a staple of the D&D game since the release of 3rd edition, but they've never looked like this. The new prestige class format debuted in Races of Destiny ensures that you, as DM, get the information you need to integrate these classes into your campaign world. In each prestige class description, you'll find a fully detailed sample character, information about how the class's members look and act, and one or more methods of entry for characters.

7. New Skill Uses: Although presented as options for players, the new uses for skills are just as important to DMs. Any time the rules provide clear and specific uses for skills, the PCs have more ways to respond to encounters, so you can widen the scope of the challenges you throw their way. Plus, anytime the players get new options, the monsters and NPCs get them too!

6. Cities Come Alive: Races of Destiny examines the cities of man and gives you new tools for bringing them to life. Among other benefits, you get advice and techniques for planning urban encounters, describing urban conditions, and defining a community's attributes.

5. Do Less Work: Being a DM is a lot of work, but Races of Destiny can help to lessen that workload. In this book you'll find statistics blocks for human, half-elf, half-orc, and illumian characters that cover a wide range of levels. These ready-made, archetypal NPCs can find a role in any game. Whether you use them as adversaries, one-time social encounters or informants, or as ongoing contacts in the characters' home city, they're bound to save you long hours of preparation time. And because these NPCs are made to fit a variety of roles, you can use many of them more than once.

4. Sample Communities: Need another DM timesaver? The sample communities presented in this and other race books are specifically designed to save you valuable time. Any one of these communities can either serve as a one-time stop or find a permanent place in your campaign world. Either way, having all the work done in advance gives you more time to plan the key encounters that define your game.

3. Give Your Cultures Some Culture: Like the other race books, Races of Destiny offers plenty of details and ideas for racial cultures. As a DM, you must bring every aspect of the world alive for your players, and this book can be one of your greatest allies in this task.

2. Intrigue and More Intrigue: Humans, and to an even greater extent illumians, are full of intrigue. No book about these two races would be complete without discussing ways to include intrigue in a campaign, and this book delivers. The built-in conspiracy ideas can lead to adventure after adventure and help to make your campaign world more mysterious and more interesting.

1. Illumians: The new race introduced in Races of Destiny is a DM's best friend. With their penchant for secrets, their love of magic, and their easy integration into existing cultures, illumians enhance a campaign with their presence.