 
Sign in to create or edit a product review. The first of, hopefully, many Starjammer additions, this 32 pages supplement covers medical care and cybernetics. It is to be noted that this book expand onto Paizo's own Technology Guide also available for free in the PRD. Also, every so often, you have a small box with a log from a Doctor point of view. That,s actually pretty neat. The first part review the COMET, the credit introduce in the corebook, explain the price difference for a pre-technology society (who would view it as magic) and a post-technology society that would see it as an everyday tool and finally the Legality index (that brings me back to my Shadowrun days), to see if it is unrestricted, permit needed, for military & government only or highly restricted. Then we get into the items. The first 9 tables covers items from the Technology Guide and indicated Pre-tech, post tech price and the legality code. Useful to have and a good quick reference. Then we have Table 10 with the same info for the new cybernetics that are described from page 14 to page 19. Some nice stuff in here, especially for infiltration. Spirit a phantom stat is introduced as an optional rule in lieu of the rule presented in the technology guide. This represents how much Cyberware your can have in you and it is the average of yuor Intelligence, charisma and constitution rounded down. Going over is, obviously, bad. For the old Runners, it's basically your Essence score. A second optional rule, Cyber Sickness is introduced and it goes into how your body treact to that much foreign material. 2 table Stage 1 and Stage 2 are offered. This is mean to be an alternative to the negative consequence of the original rule found in the Technology guide or for Spirit optional rule above. Then we have the pharmaceutical. We start with a third optional rule pharmaceutical addition. This covers what happened when you take too many hit in a short time. This modify the Additon rules found in the GameMastery Guide also available for free in the PRD. 4 pharmaceuticals from the Technology guide are presented with their addiction level and the DC needed to resist it. And presents 8 new pharmaceuticals with full detail from page 24 to page 27. A fourth optional rule is provided Miscibility. This bring me bacck to AD&D (1st and 2nd) where drinking different potions in succession is potentially bad. Same idea here with a Table for mixing pharmaceutical and one for mixing potion...I'm definitely bringing this back into my game. This briefly goes over what this supplement provided us: new toys and new pharmaceutical as well as a bit of an update of old ones. The 4 optional rules are nice and give a bit more flavor than the originally provided rule. In my opinion this is well worth the purchase and would recommanded to anyone playing Starjammer, Iron God or Legendary Planet. The Book is Divided in 10 parts:
The introduction gives you a brief overview of what is Starjammer, how it will tie in with Starfinder and how to use it. From the get-go they set the ground, it's not Spelljammer as we know it, but it can be if we so wish. They offer flexibility between Magic and Technology that you can plan anywhere between High Magic-Low tech setting to Low Magic-High Tech Setting with everything in between. This book makes a great addition to a Iron Gods/Numeria Campain or to Legendary Games' Legendary Planets or Metal Gods Material. The races presents 4 new races (a sentient ooze, a humanoid, a insect race and a half-human race) each with a nice background, alternate racial traits, race traits, favorite classes options, racial equipment for some, a racial achetype, Racial feat, racial spells and Age & Height/weight tables. Everything is included and all 4 looks well balanced to fit most games and are all quite thematic and alian at the same time. Then we are provided with an Archetype for every core race (and the gnoll). as well as some information in how they fit in the system. The Classes sections presents a 3 new archetypes (cleric heliacal healer, Fighter shock trooper and ranger void tracker), new class features (oracle mystery, kinetic wild talent, rogue talent and siege combat style for ranger), and 5 new Factions. This is a nice little chapter, that doesn't go overboard with new space class, but rather take what is already there and give it some flavor making it easier to integrate groundling character into a space setting. The Skills and Feat section presents new way to use craft (2), disable device, heal, Knowledge(2), linguistics and profession(2). Going into more detail for Craft (Vessels), Knowledge (Geography) and Profession (Pilot). Personally I would have liked a bit more fleshing out of the other 6 skills too (but the brief description in the table helps). Then you have 18 new feats (5 of which are combat including 1 teamwork and 2 that must be chosen at 1st level), that covers a good gamut of feature you might need for space combat, space travel or just space survival in general. At first glace, none of them seems overpowered. The equipment section covers weapons, Wealth by level, common space equipment, hardsuit technology and hardsuits. It's a small chapter that gives you a few example of which, but you could easily make a supplement just on this topic. The Magic Section presents 22 new spells to be used in space usable by some or all of the spellcasting/psychic classes. They cover all 3 roles (utilitarian, defensive and offensives) and range from 1st to 9th level with most option being 3rd to 9th level with maybe half the spells being 5th and upward. Overall, a nice selection and at first glance they seem fitting for the level presented. The Hazards section is devided in 3 parts. The first one describes actuall hazards such as dust cloud, meteor and comet. Good table, good description and a good diversity of hazards. The second section describes planets in terms of shape, size and type. Combining those 3 into a single descriptor for the planet will allow you to have hundreds of unique planet. It then provide us with 3 ready made planet with a description, history/background, adventuring, gazetter and adventure hook sections. It's a good way to introduce us to this system and help us get started on building our own star systems (and here we have a potential for another supplement in the future). The 3rd section presents some of the gods of the void, 3 in details (with priest, temple and a new spell each) and a table with 7 more in the same format as rthe table at the end of Gods of the Inner Sea. I would have loved to have all 10 of them fully detailled, but I understand the need to strike a balance and offering the DM the change to customize the Gods to their own setting. The Travelling section covers 2 elements: Crew and Ship. The Crew part covers the Officers and the specialized crew (Engineer, medic, etc.). They provided a good description for everyone, suggest feat and skill as well as providing tip on how those skills can be relevant the the bonus provided by having that particular crew menber. And we have rules for mutiny...just in case the captain screws up. I really like this section, its clear and concise. The second part covers Ship. It provides a serie of hull size and hull material, some sample ship for each size each which a varied number of custom point (a couple exemple of customized ship), a speed table and Component options: Engine, weapon, defensive, luxury, component, templates and preset customized pacakges. There is also a table that summarize all of those options. It,s a big section that will need to go over a few time to really take in everything, but I love the mix of Magical option VS Tech option in most section allowingfor a ship that is pure technology as well as one that is a magical marvel. It's a great section and it offers us the flexibility to make the ship we want, which I love. The Fighting section covers ship to ship battle. It provides rules for 3D combat and make use of the ship to ship rules from the free Skull & Shackles player's Guide. We has a wealth of tactic/order, Combat Manoeuver and Dogfighting tactics that acts a bit like feat as well as boarding rules. It's a good section that although not 100% accurate, should provide a good dynamic combat. The last section is Beast, a bestiary of creature that can be added as well as suggestion of preexisting creatures from Paizo's Bestiary books. At first glance they look good and We do have a nice assortment of Zurkhans, a race of "villains", mentionned at the start of the book that will surely be more detailed as time progress. That's it in a nutshell, it's fun to read, I haven't encounter any major glitches (except a missing Alternate Racial Feat and a few pages XX which has already been brought to their attention). The races, spells and feat and creatures seems well balances and should fit in most campaign easily. Just for that I would recommend this book to anyone who wish to add a Space/Spelljammer element to ther game but who doesn't wish to buy Starfinder (like me) as this book provide a good wealth of information to achieve that goal. I've recently bought this PDF on DrivethruRPG and I love it. It is a plain and simple PDF, well structured, without any image aside from the one on the cover, and it is easy to read and navigate. It is 46 pages long and if you remove the front/back cover, 3 pages index, Designe's note and licences, you have 32 pages dedicated to describing every new Bloddlines. The First 2 pages talks about the default Draconic Dloodline and also indicated how the Designer altered this "core" Bloodline to create his alternate Bloodlines. The next 30 pages are divided in 5 blocks of 6 pages. 1 block per Dragon Heritage: Chromatic, Metallic, Primal, Imperial and Outer. Each block starts with a comparative table between the "core" Bloodline and each of the 5 new Bloodlines in that subgroup, then the following 5 pages are a 1 page description of each new Bloodline giving us Alternate skills, Alternate bonus spells progression, new bonus feat and a description of the Bloodline powers. The Designer's note gives a bit more details on the how he came up with this idea and how he made it. It also indicate why the Esoteric Dragon were not added to this Expension...although I hope to see them added eventually. This can really help bring new life into a Draconic sorcerer or Bloodrager, making them familiar but different at the same time. Great for villains as it will suprise players and keep them guessing again. |
