Didn't expect to see these on the shelf at the game store yesterday and I picked them up right away. Opening the pack revealed paint jobs on the mini's that are all superior to the original sculpts. I am very happy with these and glad that they look so great.
Review on Each mini
1. Evil Cleric - Great detail and an awesome color choice. The paint job is amazing and I find I can use this mini for a lot of different PCs and NPCs. One of the things I like about this miniature is that it represents a female character and good miniatures of female characters are hard to find.
2. I love this succubus! The black wings are a good choice; having the alternate paint let's me do a lot of different things in my games and she came out great!
3. The Scarlet Gargoyle - This is the only mini I wasn't really happy with. the paint looks to me like I could have done it myself. If it wasn't for the zombies I would have given this product 4 stars.
4. Zombies! I was not happy with the zombie in the Heroes and Monster set. This zombie makes up for it with more detail and nice use of color! I love these zombies.
Overall I think this product is great. I am happy to see some alternate paint selections for my minis and would love to see more. (On the top of my list is a bigger troll, I would like to see wizkids make a bigger troll. Tiny Troll is sad, make tiny troll happy.)
Crystal, you did it right. This adventure really filled us with dread. We loved the tension, the role playing encounters, and the combat. I found it truly epic and very challenging. I only got to play it because my good friends Shawn and Katie opted to play pregens so we could make the table legal. Thanks Shawn and Katie and thanks Crystal for writing and AWESOME adventure. Out of all the scenario authors Crystal never fails to stay my favorite, I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.
I had a blast in this adventure! I owe my experience to my GM who admittedly made the adventure a lot more intense by upping the tension.
Spoiler:
Once the opera went to hell, every time we looked back the rooms were full of hordes of zombies. Encounters would be intensified through the doors groaning, heaving, and creaking with the hordes of zombies pushing to get to us as we fought through the cultists to get to their boss. At one point while we were in a battle a door exploded and a zombie T-rex was chomping at us to get in. We were terrified and had a blast!
The Lands of the Linnorm Kings is one of the most robust Pathfinder Campaign setting books I have read. Paizo has really stepped up their quality, as this book contains detailed and well written regional information, campaign integration guidelines (including a reputation rules-set), and a nice bestiary (with some generic NPCs). This book was written by a dream team of Paizo authors, Matthew Goodall, Jonathan Keith, Colin McComb, and Rob McCreary and contained everything I expected from a campaign supplement with an attention to detail that took it above and beyond.
The regional information section includes a timeline and details on the areas of Broken Bay, Grungir Forest, Hagreach (Which includes the city of Trollheim), Icemark, the Ironbound Islands, Southmoor, and the Thanelands. Each area contains background information, a gazetteer, information on the rulers, and a map of the capital (or significant landmark). This section was really interesting to me as it gave much more detailed information on areas I have played and run in PFS. I particularly liked the area on Hagreach as I have always been curious about Trollheim, the Blackravens, and Freyr Darkwine.
The following chapter, the Proving Grounds, is a list of adventure sites and events. When I first skimmed this chapter I dismissed it as adventure hooks and MacGuffins. When I took the time to read through it, I realized that they are more like adventure seeds. Each section includes a short stat block with a location, master, and notable inhabitants. It then has detailed information for building adventures around a location and an event. It gives a GM everything they need in order to build a rich adventure without leading them by the nose through a prebuilt scenario. Awesome job Paizo!
Chapter 3 has tools useful for GMs running campaigns in the Linnorm Kingdoms or any Viking setting including rules for reputation, effigies, weregild and ransom, and stats on three powerful magical items. As I read through this chapter I imagined myself either playing or running a game with Viking raids, adventuring to dark caves and fighting linnorms, massive Viking combat, and delving deep into the Ulfen culture. This chapter seemed very specialized in its use and will be widely ignored by players and GMs who focus on PFS and those not interested in creating their own Viking campaign setting.
The Bestiary goes a little beyond what I expect from a campaign book. We are given the usual encounter tables (all bestiary 1, 2, and this book) and a collection of creatures. We have the usual monsters of the region (5 new creatures!), plus four detailed generic NPC! This was my second favorite section since it gifted me with unique monstery goodness plus some nice statblocks to aid me with Ulfen encounters and character concept inspiration.
Who should buy this book?
Anyone interested in running a Viking game. It has plenty of details to run a game in the intended region or the location details, adventure seeds, and rulesets can be easily ported to any campaign setting .
Readers who want to deepen their understanding of another awesome region of Golarion.
GMs and Players looking to deepend their Ulfen Characters’ backgrounds.
PFS Judges who want to run richer locations and encounters in scenarios based in this region.
In conclusion, I love this book. I don’t run home games anymore yet I found myself wanting to build a Viking setting after reading it. I enjoyed the fluff, as setting and character detail are my favorite part of the game. Thanks Paizo for assembling a great collection of authors who were able to fit the richness of a 200 page campaign setting into a 63 page supplement.
Goblins of Golarion is a wonderful collection of background, rules, and flavor. In combination with classic monsters revisited, We Be Goblins, and the various goblin encounters in APs and modules I am much better equipped to create flavorful goblin encounters and now thanks to this book make better goblin PCs and villains.
My favorite chapter of the book is the tribes; for a campaign I am running I had thrown some goblins in and I was really curious if it worked with existing tribe locations; thanks to this book I can pick a specific tribe and use that to play the encounters accordingly.
Thanks Richard, James, and Hal for writing such an amazing supplement.
This book is monstrously epic. The ooos and awws never stopped as I flipped through its pages (in the PDF). It is 10 times more then I ever hoped for. I can't wait for my print copy to arrive. The Frog Gods rock in a way that it is so epic it makes all other rocks seem like pebbles. Keep doing what you are doing! I can't wait to see what your next epic pathfinder masterpiece is.
Looking at Faiths of Balance, and Faith of Purity as individual books might make you think they deserve lower ratings but looking at them as a greater whole gives us an awesome collection of resources for roleplaying, world building, and character background. Good job Paizo and thank you Colin for another flavorful book.
As a lover of murder mystery adventures I understand the difficulty of pulling them off without frustrating the heck out of the players and this adventure does it in spades. Colorful characters, creative settings, and interesting encounters tie up a module with an amazing amount of role playing content. Thanks Mark for writing a fantastic scenario.
I had a lot of fun playing this adventure but found it very straight forward and uncreative. After the lead up in part 1 I was expecting something epic and I got a fun little stand alone adventure with a neat little hook at the end. This is a fun one to walk through but it would have been better as a stand alone not a sequel to the epic part 1.
I love books about any of the planar realms and societies and this book does not disappoint. I have already been inspired by this book several times to create stories and threats in my campaign and I know I will come up with even more from this book as I seem to come up with something every time I read it. I thoroughly enjoy this book and wholeheartedly look forward to Vol. 3.
This book has some really good content for background material on the different races of human and historical information on the human kingdoms. While this book is rules light, it is not light in flavorful information that would help roleplaying humans and setting up background for humancentric settings.
I enjoy the companion line as supplements for player information and npc building guidelines. The drawback to the line is that they are very text heavy and have to be read to really be useful. I assume that the majority of bad reviews for a book like this has to do with its lack of rules crunch, its focus on flavor over rules, and the textheavy nature of the book. This book doesn't appear to be a quick reference but is very useful if read.
If you like books with lots of rich background and history, and lots of flavor to help roleplaying human characters and human npcs this book is worth purchasing. If you are just looking for rules, feats, traits, spells, and things to add to character builds, take a pass on this book.
If I could give 5 stars to each page of this book I would. Paizo did good in choosing the illustrious Colin McComb as author. Colin not only wrote some of my favorite Planescape books (Including the fabled rarity - Hellbound: the Blood War), he wrote my favorite rpg book of all time, The Complete Book of Elves.
Colin did not dissatisfy as this book is amazing to read, useful for players and DMS, and beautiful. It is the first piece of a 3 book series I am guaranteed to value in my collection for years to come.
I enjoyed reading the flavor for each faith, giving me the inspiration to run clerics the way they are meant to be, as members of a greater organization. It also gave me the ability to incorporate faith into my non-clergy characters. The idea of a barbarian saluting Cayden Cailean with a drink before a battle with slavers was totally inspired by this tome.
The concept of a greater body behind each cleric is not lost on me; I am inspired by this book to add this kind of flavor every time faith is represented in my games. This book breaks it down by perspective of adventurers, classes, goals, identifiers, devotion, other faiths, taboos, traits and the church itself. I can look in this book (and the other 2 that are yet to come) when creating clerics, deities, and churches.
I haven't even scraped the surface of what this little 31 page book gives as there are minor deities including nonhuman racial deities, and Empyreal Lords (Which I have been looking for content on), more organizations (because I never want paizo to stop giving us factions), and religious holidays (the calendar plays a huge part in my game, I really needed this).
This books isn't all flavor as it gives combat feats, traits (under each faith), and spells. I bought this book for the flavor and yet I still got some crunch I can apply to my religious characters. The feats aren't exclusive to faiths so we there are a few options for everyone.
Buy this book if you are interested in role playing your characters with more depth, running your campaigns with more religion, and interested in learning more about Golarion. I truly enjoy this book and consider it one of the most valuable that I have; it truly speaks to how I play and gm.
The Inner Sea World Guide is one of my favorite game books and my absolute top favorite Golarion book for overall content, new content, design, and flat out beauty.
The book is masterpiece of content as each race, region, religion, and detail of the world is covered in decent enough detail that this book is the only truly essential book needed to run a campaign in Golarion. This book does not only give a starting place to place a game in this world, it gives a truly solid foundation.
New content includes fantastic artwork, new detail in maps, new, updated information in regions including previously unseen adventure hooks, a lot more detail on Gods, and updated pathfinder stats for firearms, prestige classes, feats, equipment, spells, and magic items. The book even had room for a bestiary!.
As far as the art, I was afraid this new world guide would just use previously used artwork; I was wrong as their is tons of artwork peppering the book including awesome images giving a glimpse at the feel of each region. Just being able to see the fashions of a certain region is worth the cost of the book.
To sum it up the Inner Sea world guide isn't just an update to the pathfinder system, it is an upgrade from an existing high quality book to one that puts every other campaign book I have ever read to complete shame. Paizo has raised the bar with the inner sea world guide; a bar that I know that their awesome team will be able to lift higher and higher. The sky is the limit!
This scenario was creative and challenging with opportunities to test roleplaying, creative skill and equipment use, and combat tactics.
Spoiler:
The big encounter in the bar with people making bets on a battle between summoned creatures in an aquarium was fantastic! I am constantly trying to come up with creative activities for bars in my own game and have to congratulate Crystal for coming up with something truly novel that I will definitely imitate in some form in my own scenarios.
Pros - I enjoyed this book a lot because I was able to form an image in my mind of a nontraditional party and was inspired by it's use of social skills against creatures that I normally see most parties just fighting. I enjoyed the story, the surprises, and the characters.
Cons - I didn't give this book 5 stars because the use of third person was a bit distracting, the surprises were cool but not very new or unique, and some of the modern language (kicked in the nuts was actually used) was a little distracting and unnecessary.
I enjoyed this book a lot and would recommend it. I was able to overlook it's flaws and enjoy the book but I know a lot of people who wouldn't be able to get past them as emphasized by other reviews here.
I had to drive an hour out of town to find a participating shop and I am so happy I did as I not only found a new shop but found this amazing book that goes above and beyond as a free product. The characters, concept, and ease of play sell me on this completely, I have never run a module before (we always do home brew) and am happy to be running this as my first. Thanks Paizo, this book is awesome and it really shows how awesome you are to release an amazing free product like this (which blew all the other free products out of the water!)
Prince of Wolves was an amazing novel due to it's presentation, characters, presentation of setting and plot. I enjoyed the story and feel inspired to run not only an Ustalavic campaign but campaigns with less traditional party structure for story purposes.
I enjoyed the split perspective between the two characters. I found it a bit confusing at first, as I read further it added anticipation and engagement to the character's point of view. I also found it added a bit of mystery to the story through discovery of what early events meant later in the book.
I felt the character's were unique and felt that they were presented thoroughly. I became so engaged with them that I shouted out loud for joy when I found out that there is web fiction including them and Master of Devils will be based around the same characters.
The setting of Ustalav was well represented and I feel a lot more comfortable running a campaign based there. Reading prince of Wolves cemented my purchase of Carrion Crown, Rule of Fear, and anything else based in Ustalav. I look forward to more books from Dave and am now hooked on the Pathfinder tales novels.
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