This pdf is 49 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page combat & initiative tracker, 2 pages char-sheet, 2 pages mini-sheets for monsters, 1 page advertisement and 1 page SRD, leaving 41 pages of content for the mythic bane of NeoExodus, so let's check them out.
The book starts out with the sentence "Everything here is a lie" - and rightfully so, for the first ones are the enigmas, the boogeyman, the dark specters from NeoExodus' Past, always ready to reclaim their once established choke-hold over the races of this world and subsequently have their machinations span over several minions, plots and...well. That could be a lie, too. In fact, this review could offer nothing but false information to lure unwitting DMs into the clutches of the First Ones' machinations. Confused/disquieted yet?
The writing is quite clever in that is does not portray these mysterious races as the ultimate truth of the first one, but rather as a fleshed out (and at least partially) real possibility, so, who are the first ones? First, we get 5.5 pages of general history of the first ones, their alliance (called "the Combine"), as well as their legendary subterranean refuge, Kayen'Te. There is also a rough sketch of Kayen'Te provided. After that, we're introduced to the first of the races that make up the first ones, the Aneishi.
The Aneishi are spider-like, highly intelligent and almost emotionless compassionate schemers and their history of the first ones' defeat and exile in Kayen'Te reflects that. "Their version"? Yep, turns out that each race, somewhat similar to our own history has its own narrative of the exile, what happened and negotiates this "truth" with both themselves and other "historical" narratives of their exile. VERY COOL. The typical Aneishi is granted a CR 7 statblock. Next are the Exodites, one of which you can see on the cover of the book. Exodites? Yep, they actually don't have anything to do with drow and are extremely obsessive, lawful being that devote their time single-mindedly t o a vocation or task and thus often excel at their given fields in tremendous ways. A CR 7 standard Exodite is given and DMs also get racial modifiers to make their own Exodite characters. Next up are the Khaynites, extremely decadent, vile somewhat human-resembling, elitist aberrations that can cross-breed with just about anything and have a sadistic, mad streak. Their sample statblock sets them at CR 8 as either oracles or sorcerors with quite deadly arrays of spells. I love them. Next are the Kobura/Sobeka, actually 2 kinds of reptilian creatures, one snake-like (Kobura, sample stat CR 5, get racial abilities for DM to make characters) and one crocodile-like (Sobeka, CR 8).
Right now, we have 4 different histories of the First Ones and their exile, serving to further the theme of ambiguity and canon-yet-not-canon the book tries to convey - uncertainty and a lot of hooks, with the truth probably being somewhere beyond all the official versions. On the crunch-side, we get 25 new feats or the First Ones, all right up the racial/monstrous feat alley and have distinct, evil/corrupt touches -Khaynites can e.g. take "Masochistic Ecstasy", which nets them bonuses when they are hit hard in battle. While the feats are definitely nothing for players, they serve to enhance the alien, dark feeling of the First Ones. After a brief discussion on their relationships with other races, outsiders etc., we get 2 new exotic weapons for Exodites, a special saddle for Kobura, 4 new poisons and an amulet that lets Scythians enhance their natural bone-spur attacks. Scythians? Yep, they are also in this book and while the rank and file foot soldiers of the First Ones have their own book, they are included in the last section of the book, in which we get to know their servants:
From awakened black puddings (CR 7), to fungal rust monsters (CR 4, includes the fungal template), the Koleos (Beats-of-Burden Human-beetle crossbreeds by the Khaynites), the Scythians, the Taliki (quite deadly goat/chicken-hybrid flying steeds) and the Locari.
Oh the Locari. let me tell you about them: The Khaynites have engineered these creatures from a hybrid of insect and reptile and created something truly terrifying - a swarm of highly specialized, individualized killers that breed fast, true and are somewhat reminiscent in both skills and artwork of Giger's Alien or Warhammer 40K's Tyranids. The newest, prime achievement of Khaynite fleshcrafting, Locari are deadly and range in CR from the lowly CR 2-drone over CR 3,4,5,6,9 and CR 6 swarms till 15, which is the queen. Oh yeah, and then there are the living siege-weapon behemoths, clocking in at devastating CR 20 and 22, respectively. Have I mentioned that 21 hive niches are given, I.e. special mutations for specific tasks Locari can choose from? Or that any divination aimed at them is unreliable at best? I LOVE these creatures and hope to see more of them - much more. Their potential and coolness, both in design and implementation, just rock. Oh yeah, and they are their own subtype of the first one subtype.
Conclusion:
Layout is beautiful full-color and adheres to the two-column standard, as I've come to expect from books by LPJr Design. The artwork is stunning with 3 minor gripes: The Taliki-artwork falls short of the Paizo-level-quality of the others (it's still a nice picture), the Keleos don't get their own piece of artwork and the sketch of Kayen'Te is a rather pixilated and simplistic b/w-drawing that feels oddly out of place in the otherwise STUNNINGLY beautiful book. A good sketch, possibly by one of the cartographer's guild or other talented folks would have helped there. However: Me nitpicking at the art is nitpicking at the highest level - just take a look at the cover's Exodite and you can glimpse at the quality all other pieces of artwork in the book have. I especially loved the twisted Khaynite-picture and the Locari - nice work there! Editing, while not perfect, is good and only sports some punctuation errors. I noticed no formatting glitches. The pdf is extensively bookmarked, which is nice for a file of this size - however, at least in my version (and I tried re-dling), they don't work.
When I first saw this book, I thought "Oh no, they'll take away the mystery of the First Ones". Thankfully, I was wrong, as the "nothing is true"-angle of the First Ones and the writing in this book makes it possible to consider this _a_ canonical source for First One lore, but not _THE_ truth, still leaving the enigma and potential for DM creativity. That being said, I consider the angle the book takes, smart. However, after reading the book, I somehow felt that it lacked the je-ne-sai-quoi to make the book truly exceptional - after some careful consideration, I managed to put my finger on it: The crunch of the First One races, namely the Aneishi and the Khaynites - While I especially love the Khaynites as a take on the trope of decadent flesh-crafters, they lack e.g. a non-cater-version or a racial progression and the same unfortunately holds true for the Aneishi, making them less versatile as races than they could have been. Especially in contrast to e.g. the Locari.
That being said, the book manages to evoke one sentence in my mind "Through a mirror, darkly" - the First Ones, as depicted, are a dark reflection of the intrigues and backstabbing in the Imperial Alliance and their Combine serves as both a dreadful reminder of the slippery slope on which the politicians and conspiracies might yet lead the world. The execution is smart, the twisting of the classic subterranean races is expertly done and even the twisted tropes, just as this "dark reflection"-theme further serve to enhance the uneasy, nagging feeling, that the First Ones want you as the DM to believe the content of this pdf. Being a clever and cool book, that somewhat could have been even better, I'll settle for a final score of 4 stars - if you're looking for some nice twists of classic arachnid, drow-like, reptilian or fleshcrafting creatures, you might enjoy this book, even if you don't use NeoExodus. For fans of the setting, this book is obligatory anyway.
Villains II is 30 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside of front cover, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC (once again with a nice rhyme - I really like them!), 1 page advice to reading stat-blocks for novice DMs, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving 21 pages of content, so let's check it out!
What defines a villain besides being an enemy to the PCs? Well, for example the fact that they usually have minions and thus, the pdf introduces minions for the villains herein.
So, what kind of minions do we get? We get Gargoyle scouts (CR 11, ranger 7), 2 stat-blocks for Ghast hordelings (CR 7 and CR 9, fighter 2/rogue 3 and fighter 4/rogue 3) and three unique minions. These unique minions get the full-blown Raging Swan Press-NPC-treatment, i.e. they get background information, mannerisms, distinguishing features and hooks - impressive. Even more impressive, though, is that the minions have enough character to be villains of their own right. From an Invisible stalker rogue over a Quasit bard to an Ogre-mage fighter, the minions rock.
After 1 page chapter heading, we are introduced to the villains, the first being an elf wizard turned necromancer and vampire during his career- including the lost divination spells in the block. Next up is an extremely cool Incubus fighter who might very well be the center of a whole campaign. Next up is a sorceror lich who can tap into his draconic lineage to grown wings and use draconic breath weapons, but feels compelled to act on draconic greed and delusions of supremacy. Next up is a rather disturbing werewolf druid (in normal and hybrid form stats) that has succumbed to his bestial nature to the extent that he mates with his animal companion (who also gets stats) as well as 5 members of his demented circle of fanatics. On another note, we get a deadly Minotaur barbarian come pirate who lives only for the moment and has succumbed to alcoholism and his destructive bouts of anger. The final villain is a rather sad/tragic, a sorceror/dragon disciple who has been lynched and mummified alive by an angry mob now seeks for vengeance and has a nice potential tie-in with "Fellowship of the Blackened Oak".
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice an mistakes. Layout adheres to the printer-friendly, simple and elegant 2-column standard set by RSP and the b/w-artworks were ok for the price. On the formal side, there is nothing to complain about, so what about the characters themselves? My main point of criticism towards the first villains-book was that some of the villains lacked unique characteristics. This book remedies that, and brilliantly does so - the villains get unique abilities, captivating backgrounds and always FEEL like characters - i.e. their reasons for their descent into evil is logical and concisely written - To the extent that each villain made me spontaneously come up with several plot ideas for adventures while still being easy to drop into any given campaign. Quite a feat, I might add!
With my lack of criticism, the flawless writing and the cool characters herein, I practically have to settle for 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval. This pdf is worth each and every cent and continues RSP's trend of awesome, almost perfect, high-quality supplements. Well done!
This installment of the Faces of the Tarnished Souk-series is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 11 pages for the 3 incarnations of Arhanoth, so let's check them out!
In the tradition of the FoTS-series, this one kicks off with an aptly-written one page of character introduction, information on dream-burning (though this one is dream-barren), a lore-section as well as a how-to-use sidebox for the DM.
As per my format for these reviews, I'm going to work from back to front: There are a lot of templates in this book: The "Broken creature"-template that makes constructs "broken" and thus weaker (immensely useful in my opinion), the exemplar template that makes a creature one paragon of its kind with better and more pronounced attributes, the suzerain template, which makes you a natural born leader and the time-seer template (which is probably the coolest), which lets a creature perceive the future and act according to this constant barrage of possibilities via a wisdom check - otherwise it gets impeded by the conflicting images it constantly perceives. The pdf also does something I've longed for quite some time, introducing a lesser version of the Kolyarut-inevitables that clocks in at CR 6, making it easier to give them class-levels.
Next up is the low-level incarnation of Arhanoth and what can I say - He's a Kolyarut-inquisitor using a meteor-hammer (a chain with a huge ball, gets its own stats) that doubles as a censer. Matt Banach and Justin Sluder have officially infiltrated my mind - in my home-brew campaign there's a legendary inquisitor with exactly that weapon, including passing dispassionate judgment! The low-level incarnation has no class-levels and thrice the broken template and has not yet the time seer template, while the mid-level incarnation gets monk and inquisitor levels. In the most powerful incarnations, he is the leader of the Iron Gavel, a group of powerful individuals serving Arhanoth and passing judgment in the Souk. He gets 2 traits, Dream-barren and Killer and 2 new bracers are introduced that keep their wearers alive. His deadly meteor-hammer gets its powerful stats and 3 feats are provided to expand judgments, extra banes and cohorts.
The true star, though, is the awesome, deadly high-level CR 21-incarnation of Arhanoth: Using 3 templates, cool items and finally providing for a cool high-level inquisitor/monk, he ranks among the most deadly and relentless combatants I've seen in quite some time.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the classic B/w-RiP -two-column standard. Formatting is top-notch and I only noticed one very minor editing glitch, a superfluous asterisk in the time seer template. The piece of artwork for Arhanoth is awesome and the NPC per se is awesome - hell, I practically admit to having just about this character in my home-campaign, thus, of course, I love him. If his signature litany would be In Strict Confidence's "Engelsstaub"-song as a theme, I'd be sure that Matt and Justin have somehow infiltrated my table - With the lack of any significant glitches, the cool ideas and the beautiful stat-blocks, I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars, continuing the excellent track-record of the FoTS-series.
This pdf is 34 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving 30 pages for the spells, so let's take a closer look at the spells, shall we?
7th level is traditionally the level that introduces what I like to call "High Magic", i.e. spells that only specialists, primary casters, can cast and subsequently I expect something beyond useful or cool spells, but rather magic that clearly distinguishes the caster as a master of his craft.
In accordance with my format for 101-spell-reviews, I'll once again mention select spells which I considered cool and ones I didn't like, hopefully providing a nice overview of the book.
After 3 pages of spell-lists we get the spells, so let's check them out! The first spell I found that I really liked is a debuff/buff-spell called "Calculated Anger", which grants barbarian-like rage bonuses to allies and penalizes the enemies with uncontrollable anger. "Consume Item" destroys magic items via touch and grants you temporary HP - your PCs will hate this spell and I love it! One of the coolest spells in the book, though, has to be "Copycat": You can replicate a spell of 6th level or lower cast by before by any caster in the encounter it is cast, complete with variable casting times dependent on the casting time of the original spell.
Once again, the series also features some nice curse-spells: "Bestow Greater Curse" felt rather uninspired - especially in direct contrast with the "Scourge"-curse (also in this book): While the latter comes with great sample curses, the former is only a bland set of penalties. "Curse Greater Ability" is a spell that, while not bad per se, I didn't like: It prevents a foe from using one ability. While not bad, it is dependent on meta-game-knowledge and subsequently not my cup of tea. One of the cool spells, fluff-wise, is "Dragon's Teeth Warriors", creating clay golems from dragon's teeth planted in the ground. "Earth and Fire" also rocks - it deals damage AND modifies effects in the area of the spell, adding e.g. bludgeoning damage to fire spells. Awesome idea, I would have loved to see more like that. "Explosive Dispel" is also nice - dispel and damage in one fell swoop.
For the dragon-fans, there is "Flames of the Dragon's Fury", a spell that grants you a fear-aura, natural armor and the ability to use draconic breath (which shortens the spell's duration) - great and iconic spell! "Ward of Vaults" and "Haunted Grounds" are also nice spells, making locations more hostile to intruders and offering several nice ideas. When I read "Monstrous Lore", I thought I'd hate the spell: It tells the players the abilities of a monster via its parts or scat. However, it only delivers the names of the abilities, not what they do, potentially giving the DM some leeway. "Rage of the Red Dragon" is a good example for a wasted chance - it's just a combination of "Form of the Dragon I" and "Rage". Especially in contrast to the "Flames of the Dragon's Fury"-spell, this felt rather bland. For the rather sadistic guys like yours truly, there's also a great spell "Mass Unstable Form" temporarily polymorphs the victims into living, amorphous blobs. The best spell, though, has to be "Steal the Painful Memory", which removes a certain event from the collective knowledge of a large area, but also creates a piece of evidence - once the evidence is destroyed, the knowledge returns to the people. AWESOME!
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I only noticed one glitch, not enough to detract from the final score. Layout adheres to the classic b/w-two-column standard and the artworks are ok. On a design note, there are almost no spells I didn't like and I gave some examples of cool spells. However, in contrast to e.g. 6th, 9th and 0-level, I didn't notice that many "OMG-HOW-COOL"-spells. Thus, my final verdict will be 4.5 stars, concluding my reviews of 1010 spells on a rather high note.
This map pack comes as both with a 19 and 33-page pdf, each with 1 page front cover, 1 page how-to-use, leaving 17 and 31 pages, respectively.
Let's start with the lower level:
We get a one-page version of the map, complete with grid and 8 pages blown-up versions of the map (including grids, of course)for use with miniatures as well as a b/w-version blown-up version of the map.
We also get the 1-page overview-map on the upper-level as well as 16 pages of blown-up versions of the map, again in full-color and b/w.
The lair is in itself interesting, as it is located in a cavern featuring a waterfall and features the stunning level to detail I've come to appreciate from Jonathan Robert's work. Even better - poor Europeans like yours truly get the whole maps in A4-format as well.
The Fantastic maps line also provides jpegs of the overview maps, with and without grids as well as full maptool-support.
What really made my day with this installment of fantastic maps, though, was the additional isometric version of the bandit's lair that is provided in a separate jpeg: Damn, I love it. Perhaps because it conjures up some pleasant memories of grognardian days of old for me, but I love it and its inclusion proves that this already excellent line seeks to go above and beyond.
Conclusion:
The maps are stunning and bookmarked, the support is extensive and for several formats and the isometric bonus jpeg is just great. I could whine about wanting a blown-up isometric version of the map in addition to the top-down ones, but that would be criticizing for additional, awesome content. This installment went even further than other ones and thus I'll happily, gladly give it a full 5 stars - Jonathan Roberts has once again provided an interesting location that is far cooler than the rather generic "Bandit's Lair"-title would lead you to presume. Highly recommended!
This pdf is 19 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 14 pages for 101 monster feats, so let's take a look at them!
The first thing you'll notice is that the layout is beautiful and adheres to the full-color two-column standard set in the Pathways free e-zine line. Thus, the book is a beauty to behold. Monster feats are feats specifically for monsters (d'unh) and not players, so what do I expect from them? I expect them to be an easy, cool way to customize my critters, expand their abilities and open up new and iconic tactics for my tried and true foes. What I don't expect is "Add +2 to the DC of ability XYZ".
Thankfully, this pdf does not fall into this filler-trap, but rather offers some very cool feats for monsters - One example would be the spit venom feat tree, which lets you spit your venom as a contact poison. Poison-lovers do get more love with virulent poisons, but there's more: Fans of our iconic dragons can now give them feats to change their breath weapon-energies (already seen that, sorry) and some rather cool ones that let you sculpt breath weapons into e.g. cubes or spheres and there are some abilities that make swallowing be a VERY, VERY painful experience for the swallowed creatures.
Indeed, many of the feats add free maneuvers to abilities like e.g. pounce or improve these already existent abilities.
The true winners of this pdf, though, at least for me, will be outsiders (especially the poor elementals) and undead: Elementals can change into living, fighting Walls (via Elemental Entrapment) or detonate and instantly reform, angels, devils and demons and the like can move to the astral plane and directly from there to heaven or hell via "Astride the Ladder" or deliver a terrible curse when being banished to another plane. "Cloak Alignment" makes for a great feat for insidious/stealthy outsiders that don't want to be discovered via low-level divinations. On the goofy, humiliating and just plain awesome side we also get "Expel Creature", which lets you projectile vomit swallowed foes at enemies. Imagine the look of your players. Priceless.
Miss the Slaadi and their parasitic means of propagation? "Pandemoniac Corruption" lets you add the inside-out-friend-fun on your creatures. Undead gain perhaps one of the most deadly and cool feats EVER: "Aura of Suffering" negates ALL kinds of magical healing, fast healing and regeneration in an aura of 5ft. per HD - if used sparingly, this makes for truly frightening opponents, especially when e.g. combined with the almost inescapable "Death Grip". Liches can now use living beings as phylacteries, serving for awesome moral dilemmas. However, there also are losers - fey get the short end of the stick and e.g. "Beguiling Nature" only adds a +2 to Bluff and +2 to the DC of charming abilities - rather bland, especially in direct contrast to the big, baddy abilities like "Breaching Fling", a capsize attempt that flings people through the air and the "Improved Awesome Blow", which lets you, Sauron-style, bash enemies and fling the through the air like the puny foes they are.
Conclusion:
I've already mentioned the beautiful layout and the artwork is fine. Formatting is good, although there is one feat that is called "Invested Form" and improves the gaze attack of a critter, which felt a bit strange to me.
It should also be noted that every feat gets its own short sentence, written in-character, that comments on the ability presented in the feat. While it seems to be just a small benefit, it made reading and re-reading the book much more enjoyable than it would otherwise have been.
The crunch of the feats is great and made me come up with many good ideas and although some of the feats felt like fillers (e.g. "Beguiling Nature") or the "Improved Curse of Lycanthropy", that lets the DC of the curse scale with your level, something I'd personally rather house-rule, but oh well, there are significantly more killer feats than fillers (Ratio of about 90% great ones) and that would usually suffice for a good 4.5 star-rating. However, in contrast to other publications by Rite Publishing, this book is plagued by a surprising plethora of punctuation errors, that crop up in the fluff-sections and, while not impeding the ability to understand the feats, deter from the otherwise juicy feeling of the book. Most feat-books are rather dry reads and this one isn't and I really think that these fluff-sections should become the standard. The amount of glitches irritated me and did detract from this otherwise great innovation and thus, I'll detract another star, resulting in a final verdict of 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 due to the quality and imaginative potential of the feats. Note that usually I'd round down to 3, but however I look at it, this book IS still too good for 3 stars, thus my rounding up this time. I hope for V.2.0 to get another editing pass.
This adventure for 4-6 PCs levels 8-10 is 52 pages long, 1 page front cover, 3 pages editorial and ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page blank inside back cover and 1 page back cover, leaving 45 pages of content, so let's check the adventure out!
Being an adventure this review contains
SPOILERS, so potential players beware and skip to the conclusion.
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....
Still here? All righty!
The adventure per se is very straight-forward - the PCs stumble across a map that leads to a wandering store that sells extremely powerful items and weapons, even to the point of being able to supply large warbands. The PCs are hired by a local duke and venture forth to seal the deal he struck with the owner of the shop. This wouldn't be an adventure, were it not for the complications, though: An assassin in the employ of a powerful evil priestess is hot on the PC's trail and makes the dangerous journey to the shop even more strenuous for the PCs. In contrast to what you'd expect, the adventure is actually focused on wilderness travel and does so in a laudable way: We get flavor-texts and individual tables for the random encounters for each day, thus ensuring a high replay value. There are also some fixed encounters along the way: A large scale ambush by mercenaries, the attack of aforementioned assassin, a ruined village full of undead and the final battle against the evil priestess and her retinue. While the first three encounters are deadly and cool, the latter felt strangely anticlimactic, possibly due to the climax of this adventure actually being the shopping tour in Albion Armitage's arsenal:
The shop is actually a vast, trans-planar location to shop that is kept by a demi-god-level Wizard and his (non-evil) succubus-manager/lover. The transcendent, multi-planar feeling of the location is reminiscent of the Planescape days of old and even the ability of the shop to travel to other technology-level-realms is hinted at, which is a nice touch. The location and its ideas are absolutely iconic and rock. Two new kinds of constructs are introduced, Albion's human-like drones and a terrible siege-golem. The new weapons and armor, both mundane and magical, add a nice additional touch and there even are rules for Berserk-style huge swords (Behemoth swords). The warbrand weapon felt a bit overpowered, though. It should be noted that, although the NPCs of the Arsenal get their own stats, no XP are provided. With Albion alone ranking at a whopping CR 30 and home-advantage, combat is not advisable anyways. The shopping-tour and return home constitute the end of the adventure.
On the handout-side, we get the map to the arsenal, the duke's receipt and 4 pages of full-color maps with grid to use with miniatures for the encounters.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the printer-friendly, two-column standard, the artwork is b/w and we get high-quality artworks for all the NPCs. The artwork for the siege-golem (also seen on the cover), at least in my humble opinion, is the one bad piece of artwork in the book, which makes it a strange cover-choice.
Editing is top-notch: I didn't notice a single typo or glitch - Congratulations!
The encounters per se are cool, but the elaborate back-story of the villains plans is mostly lost on the PCs, with the adventure amounting for them to a string of wilderness encounters culminating in a final fight with a villain the PCs/players don't have a stake in defeating. I have the biggest problem with the climax/villain-encounter in the end - it's a) too easy in contrast to the other lethal encounters and b) the siege golem would have made a MUCH cooler final encounter. Or have the villain with the siege golem attack the starting city and have them tipped off about that attack by Albion. The shop ROCKS and the items etc. are iconic and great, but adventure-wise, there is not too much to write home about: The wilderness-encounters are cool, but I can't help but feel that the adventure somewhat falls short of its own potential. If you as a DM want to use the arsenal, it absolutely rocks and can change the political landscape of your campaign and redefine warfare. The siege-weapons and mundane weapons are cool, as are the characters of the arsenal. I'm hard-pressed to rate this adventure: On the one hand, we get a great location, on the other hand, we get a rather run-of-the-mill, yet detailed wilderness track with maps, handouts etc. Separately, I'd rate the shop 5 stars and the adventure 2.5 stars. In the end, I'll settle for 3.5 stars, depending on what you're looking for - if you want to build cool follow-ups/want an iconic shop, go ahead - you'll love this. If you however want to GM an adventure that is story-heavy and moves towards a stunning climax and are not interested in the location, this might not be for you.
This pdf is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and two pages advertisements, leaving 8 pages of new content for the Magus base-class.
I've long liked Gish and once I get finally reviewing some of my SGG-products, I'll also look at how their takes on the Gish-trope work - for now, though, Paizo has released the lauded arcane knight base class called the Magus in Ultimate Magic, which chances are if you read this review, you'll possess. To cut a long debate short - whether you like it or not, the Magus-class gets some new toys to play with in this supplement: 34 new magus arcana are contained herein, so let's take a look at them for now: To come out with it right away - I didn't have significant problems with any of the new arcana options and liked the additional options they provide for the magus-class. My favorites were "Damage Shield", which gives you a kind of buffer for any damage for one round and "Nigh Irresistible Strike", which can reduce spell and energy resistances as well as damage reductions. Of course, some of the abilities also feature some iconic abilities, like the "Energy Web" that throws a web of deadly energy at opponents and "Charge of the Magi", which propels you with force towards enemies. "Slice through Wardings" had me experience a knee-jerk "no way"-reaction when I first read it: The ability lets you ignore all magical defenses of the foe. However, it takes both 1 point of arcane pool and it only works for a single attack. I guess I can live with this limit. There are also 4 special song-arcanas associated with the elven/half-elven bladesinger-trope and they ROCK. Oh yeah, "Wave of Mutilation" lets you hit enemies in cones, Sauron-style. Nice!
Furthermore, we get the new "Singer of Blades"-archetype, a cool take on the bladesinger with some rather iconic abilities: The capstone creates replicas of the magus' weapon and attacks all foes in 30 ft. and the focus rests on mobility and rapiers/longswords. The 7 new feats are nice, I especially liked the "Deny the Afflicted"-feat, which disables the last attack (lowest BAB) of enemies afflicted by your hex/curses - a great feat not only for the magus, but also for the as of yet somehow underpowered Witch.
Finally, there are 2 new items dealing with enchanting weapons and transferring touch spells into arcane pool and even better, we get a cool legacy weapon sword, Mournsky. I've said it multiple times and I'll say it again - I love well-crafted legacy weapons and this one is no exception.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the full-color-two-column standard set by the Pathways e-zine and subsequently is beautiful. Editing is good - while the first version still suffered from some glitches, this review is for V.2.0 of the book which has cleared all the typos I noticed in the first version. (Also the reason it took me so long to review this - I've rewritten my review.) The pdf is also extensively bookmarked and offers a nice value and additional fodder for the Magus. Balance-wise, I didn't notice any ability/feat or other piece of equipment. I'm not a big fan of the cover-art, but that's personal opinion. Usually, a set-up like this would lead to a 5-star-rating, but somehow, I'm loathe to give this one 5 stars - while the book does everything right, I still feel like there's something missing - not rules-wise, but rather with regards to the abilities. You can do awesome things like walking on vertical surfaces etc., but I didn't get the "this blew me away"-vibe from this book, thus, my final verdict for this book will be a good 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for the purpose of this platform as I think it's closer to 5 than to 4.
This pdf is 21 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 1 page combat & initiative tracker, 2 pages of mini-sheets for monsters and 1 page SRD, leaving 15 pages of content for the Kaga's church, so let's give them a closer look!
First of all, we have to take a look at what the Kaga is to get any confusion out of the way and subsequently get an aptly-written introduction to the organization - to make it short, the Kaga is one of the major players of the world of NeoExodus, one of its unique, distinguishing features. The Kaga is the reason why mankind and all other races could break from the chains of the vile entities/races called "First Ones", sundering the first empires and jump-starting all of human evolution and cultural development. What is the Kaga, then? The Kaga is the collective minds and knowledge of the best and most wise of humankind, a kind of extranet of divine proportions that has accumulated even more knowledge in the decades since then by gaining the knowledge of its adherents. The Kaga is essentially an arcane collective intellect and accumulation of knowledge on par with most deities and subsequently also has its own church with its "clerics". The Order of Kaga is the secret section and strong arm of the church and, while the recap sounds like an unproblematic/allied organization, there is plenty potential for conflict - turns out the Kaga is devoted to the progress of mankind and mankind alone, paving the way for any racial tensions/jingoistic storylines you might want to throw at your possibly multi-racial group.
What has a church going for itself, whose believers can commune directly with the font of knowledge and might even get some answers? When they know the correct syntax and ask the right questions, that is... Mechanically, there are some interesting bits here: We get a new archetype, the cleric of Kaga, which is essentially a cleric that counts as an arcane caster - thus they don't qualify for divine caster prerequisites, but gain spells and domains normally and can select a familiar. I like the idea, but I'd like to know whether channel energy is impeded in any way. There are 8 new feats, 2 story-feats focusing on order-memberships and some that help using items, as well as one to craft a new kind of item, the so-called grafts.
My favorite bits of crunch in this installment, though, are definitely the 2 prestige classes: The Auger (5 levels, d6, bad BAB, 2+INT skills, moderate will-save, full spell-progression) is an awesome piece of writing - a class that focuses on knowledge. Yes, I can see you yawning and so was I - at first. After rereading it time and again, I can attest, though, that this class actually is one of the VERY rare takes on the smart guy that works IN COMBAT. Yes, the class may be a bit short on the skill-side, but the abilities of the class enable it to be a more than valuable assistant to his friends in combat - excellent! A smart supporter-class that actually works! The second PrC we get are the Harbingers (10 levels, bad BAB, d6, 4+INT skills, medium will save, full spell progression), a class focusing on a rather creepy apotheosis towards a construct-like executioner of the Kaga's will, slowly losing his/her humanity over the course of its transformation, but gaining the ability to drain magic items for power and even additional item slots for the price of the same humanity, whose dominance as a species paradoxically the Kaga seeks to uphold, serving as a nice potential hook.
We also get 2 new spells dealing with communion with the Kaga and a section detailing 8 new grafts, modifications, that while not taking up item-slots per se, prevent the slots from being used while active. They serve as nice tools for people who want investigator-style characters and had pleasant reminiscences of DeusEx I for me - with some minor work, they might also fit into a completely different setting, which is always nice. Furthermore, we get a new helmet (to commune with the Kaga outside their temples) and a new tome complete with lore section, as well as the so-called avatar of Kaga-creature, a minuscule construct avatar (potential familiar, btw.!) that serves as both a link and a potential means of surveillance.
After these crunchy parts, we get 3 short write-ups (sans stats) of NPCs, the relationship of the order with the major players of NeoExodus (both nations and organizations), ideas for campaigns, advice on using the order as either ally or enemy as well as some adventure seeds. This last section does not completely hold up to the very immersive and cool writing from the beginning of the book and the hooks didn't impress me too much - I came up with some...better *muahaha* ideas.
Conclusion:
This book, as all books from LPJr Design's NeoExodus-line, is beautiful and adheres to the top-quality, full-color layout and features some pieces of stunning and evocative pieces of artwork. Editing, while not perfect, is ok - I did notice some minor punctuation errors, but the overall quality has vastly improved. I really like the concept of the Kaga, as it makes the world feel more unique and hasn't been done to death in similar settings and I really enjoyed both PrCs. HOWEVER, one word of warning - it's impossible for me to determine the long-range balancing of the additional item-slots without some expansive play-testing, which I didn't have the time to do. The Auger is awesome, though. I liked the feats and the new graft-items, as the serve to enhance the rather disturbing aspects of the order, but I wasn't convinced by the new archetype, as it, at least in my opinion, does not offer enough information on the potential repercussions of substituting arcane for divine energies and all class abilities. What about oracles and the Kaga? They seemed practically predestined for the order and yet don't get any specific treatment. Another minor gripe I have with the book is that e.g. in contrast to the Sanguine Covenant, we don't get "holy" or important sample places or NPCs. My basic gripe, then, can be summed up as: I want more and I think this book would have benefited from being a bit longer and possibly more expensive. Thus, with my minor gripes and concerns, I'll settle for a final verdict of 4 stars - a good buy and a cool organization, that, with a bit more room, could have been a 4.5 or even 5-star file.
This pdf is 29 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving 25 pages for the spells and comes with a printer-friendly extra version, so let's take a closer look at the spells!
After 4 pages of spell-lists, we get the spells, but before I get to them, I'll elaborate a bit - scarcely a spell level has this influence on gaming. 3rd level. Fireball and Lightning Bolt. Dispel Magic. And I haven't even delved into the curative magic. 3rd level spells have always been a milestone in my games - players suddenly can tackle larger groups, hold their own better against mages and so on. Subsequently, some of the most important and iconic spells can be found at this level and it's hard, very hard to design valid alternatives. Does this file succeed? I'll try to highlight some spells, both positive and negative, that caught my eye in order to give you a good overview of what to expect from this installment of the 101-spells-series.
"Accelerate Decay" is a spell that damages ancient creatures like vampires usually up to 10d6 damage, 20d6 to particularly ancient creatures and suppresses their fast healing for 24 hours. While only applicable to rare creatures, I think that no 3rd level spell should deal that much damage AND suppress the enemies primary means of recovery. "Airsphere" on the other hand is a spell I sorely missed in 3.5 and sees the return of a sphere of breathable air. However, I also have a problem with this spell - it automatically counter dragon's breath (which dispels it, but still).
That means that a great wyrm breath can be negated by a 3rd level spell. Not going to happen in my campaign. "Blinding Ash" is a cool twist on obscuring mist with a bit of damage added. In the "Chilling Mist"-spell, which is a cool idea, there seems to be a discrepancy between fluff and crunch, making it hard to use. "Counterattack" lets you hit back at full BAB any time an opponent makes a melee attack against you. If you use a gish-class, this spell might be gold, but DMs ought to take heed - in some encounters this can be very powerful. "Curse of Capturing" transforms all damage the target deals to non-lethal. A great way to annoy players of the Belkar-mindset. "Curse of Item Rebellion" curses an item, turning e.g. a +3 sword into a -3 one etc.. Sorry, I don't like this particular curse - I lacks the "insult TO injury"-component I look for in curses. rather, it's only an insult. "Filch" is a great trickster spell that teleports unattended items either to you or a location in range you can designate. "Force Marbles" are also a great idea for iconic escapes and cool climbing helper. "Secret Speech" conceals messages in regular speech, which makes for some really nasty ideas. "Summon Firearm" lets you conjure your personal crossbow/firearm, locked and loaded, to you. It feels a bit weak for 3rd level. I should probably note that fans of the often-neglected water magic get several nice spells that deal non-lethal damage and control the terrain.
Conclusion:
Editing is ok, I didn't notice typos or glitches, but the spell "Chilling Mist" suffers from some formatting/editing problems. Layout adheres to the tried and true rite publishing two-column standard and the b/w-artwork is ok. I get that competing with easily some of the most iconic spells is hard, but in contrast to the other 101-books, I felt that this one was rather feeling uninspired - there are several deal x damage + minor effect z-spells in here, when the space would have been better suited for some non-combative or creative spells that deal with terrain control or even other spells - after all, we already have some of the most iconic combat spells, haven't we? All in all, this one felt like the weakest installment of the 101 series, my final verdict will be 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 26 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside front cover, 1 page sub-header, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC (including once again a great rhyme), 1 page back cover, 1 page advertisement and 1 page SRD, leaving 18 pages for the tribe of minotaurs. It should be noted that the pdf comes (as all Raging Swan books that are part of the dual format initiative) with an additional version optimized for e-readers.
Without further ado, let's check them out!
After the obligatory page explaining how to read stat-blocks to novice DMs, we get 2 pages of fluff text on the minotaurs. The question you all want answered, of course, is whether this installment of the TRIBES-series once again manages to add a different twist to a classic monster trope. To be frank: Yes, it does - the scarlet axe minotaurs are made unique via several ideas: First of all, they are rather civilized, eschewing the barbarism and rage usually associated with the horned beasts. Another distinguishing mark would be the minotaur's special breeding. Serving an elder race on the decline, the scarlet axes have an aptitude for sorcerous power due to the mingling with their dread Yith masters. Suffice to say, we also get lore sections on the tribe, their masters and even some information on the black hills, their home.
Following the tradition of the TRIBES-line, we also get a huge box detailing the environment in which the minotaurs might be encountered and several locations that might serve as nice adventure locales/hooks for further adventures. We also get a one-page map of the black hills & the bleak moor, the haunt of the minotaur's archenemies. I should also note that the hills get stunning original pieces of b/w-artworks, as do the minotaurs.
On the crunch-side, we get the new Yith-bloodline for sorcerors, a new ranger-variant and 4 battle-feats that help displaying the unique fighting style of the tribe. I liked the bloodline and had no problems with any of the feats. We also get 4 new sorceror spells focusing on maneuverability and taking on aspects of the Yith as well as two new magic items (boots and a quiver), complete with their own artworks and lore-sections.
After that, we get to the stats:
We get normal and elite warriors (CR 5 & 7), Scouts (CR 7), Sorcerors (CR 7) and 3 sample encounters. In addition to the sample ideas for minotaurs given in the fluff section, we also get 2 fully detailed NPCs that get the Raging Swan NPC-treatment, i.e. we get distinguishing features, mannerisms, hooks etc. In addition, the two NPCs get their own artworks. The final two pages are devoted to the bat-like humanoid masters of the minotaurs, the Yith, which get 3 variant spell-lists, full stats and e.g. ecology & society sections as well as their own artwork.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice a single mistake. Layout adheres to the clear and elegant standard established by Raging Swan Press. The quality of both writing, stat-blocks etc. is superb. If I had to nit-pick, I'd say that I didn't particularly care for the battle-feats or the variant ranger and that the Yith-artwork is "only" good. That's it. The b/w-artworks are STUNNING and belong to the best I've seen in quite a while and the tribe per se, once again, is almost perfect. For the lack of flaws and the excellent writing as well as the overall supreme quality, I practically have to rate this installment of the TRIBES-series 5 stars and add the Endzeitgeist seal of approval - once again, Raging Swan delivers an excellent quality product for a very affordable price.
P.S.: The Kobold-tribe has been updated with additional information on terrain.
This full-color pdf is 44 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving 40 pages for the first adventure set in Relistan, the campaign setting of Silver Crescent Publishing.
This being an adventure, the following review contains SPOILERS, so potential players beware!
Still here, all right, let's dive in!
This adventure goes an interesting route for a first adventure set in a campaign setting in the levels it targets, i.e. it is intended for 4-6 PCs level 5th - 7th. Relistan being a dark setting (in the literal sense, see my review of the campaign setting), the PCs are hired by the Illurian military (a handout is provided), with whom they are expected to have worked before as a kind of firefighters. The Illurian empire is a dominant force in Reilstan and necromancy is an integral part of the empire's culture, thus being perceived as anathema by their neighbors Valin. Valin is a nation led by druids and by lycanthropes, who are considered sacred to the nation's deity, being in turn perceived as abominations by the Illurians. I mentioned in my review of the setting, that I couldn't see these nations coexisting and lo! and behold, my pleas have been heard - This adventure sets the stage for some major upheavals in Relistan as there will be war between the nations!
The PCs, as a kind of covert-ops-team, has to deliver an artifact, the "Lycan's Bane" to the border in order to give the military an edge over their shape-changing adversaries. The problem is, though, that they'll have to hurry - in 2 weeks, there'll be war and thus they will have to cross-track through the necromantically-infused wastelands in order to be there on time. This adventure constituting a race against time, the DM is required to keep track of the time. In the wastelands, the PCs will encounter both a sufficiently hard ambush by poison-using Nightlings (savage Relistan halflings) and undead and there is also a (map-less) optional encounter with a bandit lord and his fellows. Once they pass the wastelands, they'll have to fight some lycanthropic covert agents and their wolves. Both encounters get stunningly detailed full-color maps with grids. After reaching their half-way point, the PCs can either end the adventure or bring the bane the whole way to the border fortress of Caer Gorinth.
Once the PCs reach the fortress, though, it has already been taken over by a Valinite squad, resulting in a potentially lethal ambush in the court of the small fortress. This encounter also gets its own battle-map and the fortress gets its own beautiful map. After the PCs defeat the ambush and the leaders of the strike-squad, they may yet save some prisoners and consider their foray a success.
The adventure also features appendices, offering stats for nightling hunters and shamans, Gavin Shorgan & his rogues and the Valinite soldiers. The nightlings and rogues get their own respective full-color-artworks. In another section, we get a 2-page narrative of a nightling and one of his hunts and a gazetteer-like, expanded section on Elvaril, the goddess of the Valinites, complete with holy celebrations and days. The final 4 pages feature 6 pregens, one of which is a summoner that comes with an eidolon stat-block. Nice.
Conclusion:
Editing has improved - though I noticed some minor typos, there are not many. I noticed no formatting glitches. Layout of this full-color adventure is beautiful, however, it adheres to a colored-borders-look, being not easy on the printer and unfortunately featuring no printer-friendly version. The pdf is bookmarked, but only in the most rudimentary sense, featuring a bookmark for the covers, the editorial (called pre-gens 1), the beginning of the adventure (called pre-gens 2) and the pre-gens (called pre-gens 3). My overall impression of this adventure is that it somewhat falls short of its own potential, both in execution and story-line.
Let me elaborate:
The artworks are stunning and beautiful and especially the encounter-maps rock.
However, we don't get blown-up versions for use with miniatures, which is a pity - their quality is high enough and their grids lend themselves to this. I also would have loved a key-less map of Caer Gorinth - being a military fortress, my PCs will definitely ask one of their employers at least for a sketch of the fortress and the map is nice enough to feature bigger versions. Secondly, there are some things that could have made the adventure MUCH MORE awesome - namely a better finale. Killing the Valinites and liberating the fortress felt anti-climactic to me - a minor siege or something similar would have gone a long way.
Another problem I see with the adventure is that not even a thought is given to the possibility of the PCs defecting to Valin's side or acting as a double-agents. If this had been taken into account, the adventure might have offered some cool political intrigue when talking to employers etc. - especially in a shades-of-grey-world like Reilstan, I think the possibility should have been taken into account. Beyond that, I don't like that no stats are given for the Lycan's Bane - it automatically reverses all Lycanthropes within 30 ft. back to their human form, but that's all we get to know about it. With this power, I can't really see why the artifact is that crucial to hold a fortress. What if the PCs want to sell the artifact themselves? There is not too much going on at the fortress, either - after the initial ambush and the boss fight, the fortress is rather empty and there is not much going on with regards to the finale.
My final gripe is that the pressure by the race against time does not really have any repercussions for being late, the fortress has fallen and even if the PCs are VERY late, there are no additional soldiers - a time-line of actions by Valinites at the border or their take-over of Caer Gorinth would have gone a long way there. The impending war with all its potential unfortunately remains a largely untapped backdrop in this module. That being, said, there's nothing truly wrong with this adventure, it's a rather average introduction to Relistan that hopefully culminates in more exciting adventures. It's just a pity that this adventure, with slightly more freedom/the implementation of some twists, blown-up maps and a better finale, could have been a plain awesome 5-star-romp. However, with my points of criticism and at the rather steep price of $9.99 for the amount of content provided, I'll settle for a final verdict of
[EDIT]
3 stars due to the upgrade for d20 pro map support on the official homepage.
This pdf is 30 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving 26 pages for the spells and comes with a printer-friendly extra version, so let's take a closer look at the spells, shall we?
After 4 pages of spell-lists, we are introduced to the new spells. Adhering to my usual format, I'll mention spells that caught my eye, be it positively or negatively and comment on them to hopefully give you a good overview of the content herein. The first spell that I really enjoyed is "Arboreal Archer" - you imbue a tree with limited intelligence and instruct it to e.g. fire volleys of acorns, branches etc. at enemies - that's one staple of fantasy literature I always wanted druids to be able to do - cool. On the mechanical side, we get curses that counter e.g. "Cat'S Grace", "Bull Strength" etc., finally introducing debuffs for the most common buffing spells at low levels. "Confront Outsider" is a bit problematic for me - I am one of the DMs whose campaigns are focused on research and thus, true names of outsiders are carefully kept secrets. This paladin spell grants a bonus to the paladin by forcing a confrontation with an outsider and forcing it to reveal its true name. While the spell is not bad in any way, I personally won't be able to use it due to the amount of mythology on true names I established. I just wanted to mention this in case you're like me - it won't detract from my final verdict.
"Damage Loins", a magical kick to the groin, is sure to see a lot of use in my campaign, if only for the humorous potential. "Delude Divination" is a godsend for beleaguered GMs who suffer from PCs with a lot of detect spells. "Destabilize Magic" is once again a cool spell for those chaos mages among you - detract 10 from magic DCs and add 1d20 -fun and risky! "Examine Coffin", a spell that let's you glance into a coffin MIGHT be a true time-saver, but might also deprive you of the iconic coffin-burst scene - I'm torn on this one.
"Fall up" on the other hand is another spell that just screams "utilize me in creative ways". Nice! "Exploding Critical" adds some force damage to criticals - while not a bad spell, I consider it boring. The same holds true for "Force Club".
"Memory Crystal" lets you deposit a memory in a crystal - story-telling gold. On a rules-side, I think conjuring and undead-devouring yellow slime as per the "Necrophage"-spell should also be accessible to druids."Ride Winds" is another iconic addition. "Righteous Armor" lets you summon your armor, which I consider quite lame, as "Rolling Boulder", which lets you conjure a ball of elemental earth to roll over your enemies. "Silent Ray" is simply a ray dealing sonic damage and "Stone burst" is also rather bland. On the other hand, there is a "Support beam"-spell my players will never leave home without - escaping from collapsing dungeons is just too cool.
"Utter Failure" is a cool one-trick pony spell against PCs. "Web shelter" is another cool idea, especially when e.g. under water and lends itself to some nice ideas by the PCs.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Both formatting and layout adhere to the tried-and-true two-column b/w-standard and the artworks are ok. The spells were mostly great, with some truly exceptional and very iconic ones in between. However, I also felt that there are more spells that felt like filler than in other 101-installments. While still being a great book, e.g. 6th or 0-level feels better to me and subsequently my final verdict will be 4 stars - a good selection of new spells to add to your campaign.
This pdf is 102 pages long, 1 page front cover, 3 pages editorial and ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page blank inside back cover and 1 page back cover, leaving 94 pages of content, so let's check it out!
So. A gear book. I'm actually taking a look at an equipment book. The last equipment book I bought was the "Arms & Equipment Guide" that actually disappointed me. Those of you who have been following my reviews, can easily guess why - I just hate the tendency to make magic items exchangeable commodities. Thus, even though there has been considerable hype about this book, I hesitated a long time. Also due to the fact that I wanted mundane & alchemical equipment from the "Arms & Equipment Guide" and didn't get a lot (or useful) content from it, I was rather hesitant to put this book in my cart.
The extensively book-marked pdf begins with martial gear, i.e. new weapons that range from variations of swords to suitably awesome and exotic weapons like the meteor hammer (Iron ball on a chain) or the wind and fire wheels, ring-like bladed melee weapons. The chapter provides more than just new weapons, but also new armors. More importantly, though, there is a nice innovation in this chapter: Armor components - you can actually customize armors and even combine and design your own armors, e.g. consisting of sabatons, gorgets and a bascinet. It should be noted that almost all items get their b/w-artwork representation, which is absolutely neat.
Chapter 2 contains all the new adventuring gear you always wanted, but never got from the core books - From aspergils, drinking horns, wigs, special silver henna up to different alchemical incenses and even a very cool siege weapon this chapter contains all the useful things your PCs have asked for and more. My very favorite item, though, is the chirurgeon's kit - the item enables one to revive fallen characters with mundane means/operations (within limits, of course) and the mechanics are so simple, so elegant, that I was impressed. This item, while not a substitute for resurrection-magic, it is GOLD for campaigns like mine (I've banned resurrection/raise dead in favor of e.g. RiP's Restless Souls) and just about any gritty low-magic campaign.
Chapter 3 has "Items of Home and Hearth", which sounds boring, but actually isn't. From several clothing materials over food (with a plethora of spices, flours etc.), drink (also containing drunkeness-rules), jewelry up to art and toys, this chapter contains just about anything your adventurers might need. Ever wanted to know what average towels cost? Diverse hats made from exotic fabrics? There you go. While this might at first seem like detail-overkill, it's not - How many times has it happened to you that PCs wanted to trade e.g. goods from exotic locales? I had to improvise saffron-prices and their availability in different countries in my campaign due to one of my PCs wanting to professionally trade in spices - this book, had I had it then, would greatly improved my efforts. The same goes for all the detail-crazy people among you who actually enjoy changing the appearance of characters, expensive shopping etc.
Chapter 4 features prosthetics for poor adventurers that e.g. don't have access to regeneration-spells (another one I banned in my campaign...) or want clockwork legs, iron limbs etc. From mundane/alchemical prosthetics to enchanted ones, this new class of items is pure gold for everyone, who, like me, thinks that the loss of a limb can both be iconic and dramatic and need not be the end, but rather a cool station in the ongoing narrative of one adventurer. This chapter alone, at least for me, was worth the price.
I dreaded chapter 5, I seriously did. The back room of the shop contains magic items. I steeled myself and got ready to yawn and while I was not impressed by the armors, I liked all the magic weapons and wondrous items (which of course, also mostly come with their own artworks - nice). My absolute favorite item is "Fletcher' Finkleberry's Fabulous Flying Feather" - a tongue-twister-powered feather that enables you to fly. Pure awesomeness.
This book is called "shop/inn & tavern" and while the book is interspread by Luven's IC-comments on the items, it is here where we actually get the stats for the staff of both Inn and shop. 4 completely detailed, beautiful maps are provided for shop and inn and all the characters get their own artwork to show to the players. I want to emphasize the stunning amount of detail of both locations, from DCs for individual locks to detailed descriptions, this rather large chapter actually contains enough information and a page of hooks to make the place a valid, awesome hub/starting point for adventures. Just to give you an impression on the amount of detail provided - even Luven's children get their individual statblocks, the bouncer/barkeep's mace has a name and, what impressed me beyond all expectations was that there are even menus for all courses. Wow.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, in spite of the length of the book I didn't encounter even A SINGLE glitch. Wow. Just wow. Layout adheres to the 2-column standard and is easy on the printer. Usually, equipment books are a complete bore to read, but the wealth of both the ideas and the associated rules and the aptly and concisely-written prose of Luven's numerous comments serve to deter from that convention and subsequently the book is a great read. With the stunning attention to detail, rules-information, numerous artworks and innovations, the book leaves nothing to be desired. Actually, the extensive appendix goes the extra mile for the DM to add another dimension to the whole book - granting you a great adventure locale in addition to all the equipment. Soooo...was there anything I didn't like? Ahem...well...I didn't like the artwork of the cover (I know it's old-school, I still don't like it.) but the interior artwork rocks.
...
...
That's about it. All the criticism I can muster. Yep. Nitpicky, equipment-book hating Endzeitgeist is stunned and just blown away. My final verdict will be 5 stars with the Endzeitgeist seal of approval - people, if you haven't picked this up yet, do it as soon as possible. You won't regret it.
This pdf is 22 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page ToC/editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, leaving 18 pages of content.
Alvena Publishing dares to walk a different path in PFRPG-pdf publishing by flat-out stating that there are no artworks and maps in this book - an interesting take, as for e.g. some CoC-adventures the approach worked all too well - I can name at least 3 from the top of my hat that rock. The layout is also different, featuring text being presented in the 3-column-standard, though not in the horizontal standard you might know from e.g. SGG or ZSP, but in vertical orientation.
This being an adventure, the review contains SPOILERS, you've been warned.
The adventure per se has a basic and simplistic plot-line: In a town, there's an abandoned church, and some children have gone missing in a truth-and-dare at the now-defunct place of worship. The adventurers are to go and rescue them and annihilate any evil that might have taken hold of the place. After a page of introduction, we get 3 suggestions for general hooks which focus on the very basic ideas of good approach, mercenary approach and personal involvement. Thistle is detailed only in the most bare-bone form, providing names for 5 establishments and 4 characters. Three of these characters belong to the guard and one is the travelling alchemist providing a side-quest of picking rare flowers. More on that later. After arriving in Thistle, the players can encounter a grief-stricken, drunk father who wants to die by the PC's blades due to his girl being among the missing children, which I considered a bit rash, but oh well. Next up on the encounters in the town, the PCs can save a damsel in distress from some cowardly thugs. In any case, after the 2 encounters, the chief of the guards will recruit the PCs to check out the churchyard, where they'll fight orc-zombies, an undead spider swarm, more orc-zombies and finally a ghoul cleric. After vanquishing the final foe, the PCs will save the children and return from the abandoned church as heroes.
SPOILERS END
Sounds like an easy to pull off dungeon romp, doesn't it? I'll come out and be straight with you - this adventure makes a LOT of mistakes.
The two encounters in the town are the ultimate clichés of random encounters in any 1st-level adventure. While this would not be bad per se, there is no twist to the encounters. The town itself is not situated in any kind of culture/climate and the lack of a map becomes readily apparent: The town (and I'll continue calling it "town" - it's that generic) is supposed to be nestled next to a hill, which is supposedly used for mining, with the church being atop said hill. How do the business and the abandoned place of worship interact? This is but one example of what is the main problem of this book - the writing. Without maps and artworks, the adventure's mood and means to convey any kind of excitement are limited to the quality of the writing. And boy, does it fall short in this quintessential discipline. Want some examples? A moderate one from the flavor-text: "A lone church, made of stone, surrounded by a graveyard, surrounded by an iron fence that remains standing, though covered in rust." (pg.7, column 1) That's the sentence, I didn't cut or add anything. "Surrounded" is used twice in the same sentence, no height is given for the fence. And there is no verb. A "From the mist emerges..." or similar part is missing. On the same page, afore-mentioned magical plants (fog-lilies) for the side-quest of the alchemist are introduced. Sadly without providing any rules. The text states that the flowers work with fog-and cloud spells and alchemist items, that they can improve caster-level or DCs, but not by how much. A wasted chance for a nice piece of crunch. The only other information we get on the church is "This old church is built using an old style that is rarely used anymore." Ok. Which style? To which kind of god was this place once devoted? Should we assume a Judeo-Christian default? Why am I asking this? Well, there's a stone (900 GP worth, btw.) that can create up to 20 gallons of water per minute in the church. Decanter of endless water, anyone? I don't like the item due to creating water without a limit for 900 GP (somebody tell those nomads in the desert), but oh well. The church is flooded and the swarm is hidden in the water, seeking to attack the PCs from beneath the water. I get that. What I don't get is, why the swarm is not hindered by walking under the water (no swim speed) and why the cellar/catacomb is not flooded. Wait, what? Yep, after disposing of the submerged swarm, the PCs open the door to the cellar and venture down. Without mentioning any moisture on part of the stairs or how the door is elated, on higher ground, whatever. What about said mine? Wouldn't it have experienced some problems due to the seeping moisture? Is it here or somewhere completely different? I DON'T KNOW!
"But wait", Endzeitgeist, you say "Aren't you terribly nit-picky here?"
No, I'm not.
This is a potential suspension-of-disbelief-breaker. And even if given the benefit of the doubt, the fact remains that the church is so rudimentary in its depiction, so amorphous, that I can't friggin' tell why the cellar is not swamped. The same holds true for the next encounter - while finally some measurements are given for the narrow stairs down to the church cellar, no rules are given are mentioned for the PCs to be penalized by the cramped encounter apart from mentioning their enemies' reach. The final encounter has no description of the cellar, more or less leading to guess-work on part of the DM. How far away is the ghoul? Could he use perception to detect the PCs? What if they've been silent? Can he reach his hostages to try to escape while threatening to kill them? Once again, even after reading the section for the oomph-teenth time, I can't tell. On the plus-side, the treasure is detailed and goes beyond "You find X gold".
3 pages are devoted to the 4 NPCs, 2 of which don't really feature in the adventure, and 3 pages are devoted to pregens. One of the pregen-statblocks is divided between two pages, effectively limiting you to either cut the pages up or, even better, write the stats into separate char-sheets. Why? The pregens are also presented in a rather cluttered 3-column-standard, limiting the "go-and-play"-aspect of the module.
This pdf is 52 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 blank pages on the insides of the cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page advertisement and 1 page containing both SRD and editorial, so let's check it out!
The first thing you'll notice when checking this pdf out, is the ToC with the accompanying introduction on the first page, the extensive bookmarks and the clear and easy to read two-column layout. This book is a compilation and expansion of the kingdom building rules for PFRPG's Kingmaker AP that makes the system more accessible for players. Due to probably not everyone owning the AP, I'll try to sum up the rules as we go. Thus, let's get to building our very own kingdoms!
The first 2 pages depict what is necessary to build a kingdom in the first place - exploration. After the concisely-written notes, we are introduced to the mechanics you need to run your kingdom - there are 4 phases in a kingdom's turn, upkeep, improvement, income and event. Almost all checks are related to a single mechanic and the player's decision, allowing for luck, skill and planning to determine and influence the success of a given kingdom. "But wait", you might say - "what about all the players in my campaign?" Fret not, each can fill a role in the kingdom and both the kingdom building and regular roleplaying are important. Especially when taking a look at city building, the next section of the book, in which you'll also find stronghold building guidelines and rules for the development of open spaces, the connections between PC- and Kingdom-level become fairly evident. Want an academy with scholars in your city? Well, buy one!
Edicts and events add a spicey touch to the building of nations and finally, there's the mass combat chapter in which the clash of armies, their equipment and special abilities, vassal armies etc. are detailed. Players in battle and the change from units to PCs and back is also mentioned along a selection of several sample armies.
On the rather-PC-centric-side, we get 17 feats mostly dealing with leadership and terrain-movement like swimming. For small armies of casters, we get so-called mass-combat spells, i.e. spells that can only be cast as long, huge rituals and subsequently be disrupted. Which, at least in my opinion, as a concept make for great instances when the PCs try to prevent the casting of a mass combat spell. There are some non-mass-combat spells here, too, just so you know. :)
Next up are two prestige classes, the devout healer, a healing-centered caster, the hidden sniper alternate ranger-archetype and the King's Eye, the kingdom's master-spies. There also are 2 pages of magic items, an exploration map, a kingdom sheet, a city district sheet, a sheet to keep track of notable NPCs and a mass combat army sheet. All the sheets are top-quality, easy to read and concisely presented.
Conclusion:
Layout is clear, adheres to the two-column standard and serves its purpose. The b/w-artworks are ok, though nothing to write home about. Editing is ok - I only noticed 2 mistakes on all the pages and both were minor typos. I only noticed one formatting error, a case of two capital letters in the beginning of a sentence. If you're reading this review, though, that's not what sparks your interest, but rather whether you should buy this book. To cut a long rant short: If you've ever entertained the notion of your PCs owning a keep, expanding it, ruling and participating in the complex notions of politics rather than just be henchmen of rulers, this book is for you - the rules from kingmaker are concise, cool and easy to grasp, but hard to master. And this book actually delivers all you need, compiled into an easy-to-hand-out reference that will make it even easier for your players to understand the rules and immerse themselves in the great prospects of rulership That being said, the book unfortunately is not perfect - while it's a great resource for kingdom & city building, the rules fall short when it comes to mass combat, at least in my opinion. Yes, they are good. Yes, they are necessarily abstract, but I'm spoiled by 3.5's "Cry Havoc" and would have LOVED to see an expanded take on the rules and more content in that section - more spells, monster rules, more special abilities for the units etc. I realize that this complaint might be unfair, but it's all that keeps me from all out declaring this the ultimate resource on kingdom & city building and mass combat. As it stands, I still love kingdom & city building and will continue to use my own rules for mass-combat. But that's just my preference. What's my final verdict, then? It's a great book, but it could have been the reference in more than being just a reference guide, but rather THE reference. Combined with the few typos, I'll settle for 4 stars and a hearty recommendation. Anyone who plans to run Kingmaker should get this for his/her players and the same holds true for anyone planning on having the PCs acquire a kingdom/city - for you this book is a must-have.
This pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, leaving 14 pages of content, so let's take a closer look at the book!
Legends & Histories Volume I considers itself to be a guideline to crafting legends with a specific focus on how to turn them into campaign arcs, adventures, etc. and begins by explaining how to implement them in your roleplaying campaign. After a brief introduction of the subject matter, we are presented with an aptly-written legend focusing on the downfall of the once great city Jalgrimm and an artifact. An interesting sample breakdown for research is provided, diving information into subcategories and classifying the respective bits of information into 5 difficulty levels. After some sample ideas for a research stage of dealing with a legend, we get to the traveling part to reach the place in question and also get some sample ideas for the journey and then, after exploring the sample city, some advice on pulling off the final battle. Now that a general idea has been provided, a sample incarnation of how the legend of Jalgrimm as a campaign might run its course is presented.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the two-column standard, is full color and beautiful, as are the pieces of artwork. Formatting is ok, but editing could have been better, I noticed some typos.
This book is hard to rate and easy to rate at the same time - there are no rules to check out and to rate on the power-scale, this being a system-neutral book. I noticed some editing errors that could have easily been avoided, though. The quality of the writing starts off as top-notch and the legend, while not too entertaining, had me reading on and delivered some nice ideas. However, unfortunately this quality is inconsistent and can be considered lacking in the department of concise writing, i.e. there are some paragraphs featuring painfully redundant information and wording. A good example for editing glitches would be from the Military knowledge table:
"The defenses of the city made use of the lava flows from the nearby volcanoes. Traps and such would most likely still be effective unless the lava has since cooled. THe other defenses of the city were less documented but equally ingenious uses of the environment and engineering." [sic!]
On the other hand, I think that truly novice DMs might benefit from the methods presented herein. However, at the steep price of 7 bucks, you don't get solid rules, more typos than in other books ( some of which at this price are 80+ pages, full color AND have rules-sections) and not necessarily what you've been looking for.
As much as I loathe to say it: This book had nothing to truly offer to me and while the legend is nice, it's not great. There simply is no reason to truly buy this and, quite frankly, it feels like a campaign summary that has been blown up. For 1 buck, I'd consider it an ok buy, but on the other hand, there are some excellent files by Spes Magna Games that cost around a buck, have concise rules and no editing errors. In the end, system-neutral books will be judged by the quality of their writing & overall production values and after careful consideration, I just can't bring myself to recommend this book to anyone but the most novice of DMs (who should not be a s nit-picky as I am when it comes to their purchases). For novices, this book might be 2.5 stars. For anyone else, this is a 1-star-file.
This pdf is 35 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 30 pages for the 101 spells. Let's check them out!
6th level. The last level accessible to non-primary casters. An iconic level, a level that e.g. should offer a lot of nice stuff to e.g. the bard. Does it deliver? We'll see!
After 3 pages of spell-lists, we are introduced to the new 101 spells. I'll be following my format for these reviews, i.e. I'm going to tell you which spells I fancied and which ones I didn't like and try to give you a good overview of what you can expect from this installment of the 101-series.
All right, the first spell I loved, was "Aid Item", which gives an item 3 charges that can be used to activate the item faster. One of my absolute favorites in the book is "Bestow Major Curse", which offers a whopping selection of 14 (!!) new curses in one spell! By the way, have I mentioned that there are several other, really cool curse-like, permanent spells? The enchanters and practitioners of subtle magic like bards get some completely AWESOME spells - "Buried Suggestion" puts a suggestion into the target that cannot be detected until it is triggered. The bard's "Dance of Nakedness" does not make the target naked, but negates its items - however, the bard must keep moving AND stay close to the target - powerful, exciting and takes a seldom-seen mechanical edge to the spell. "Divide and Conquer" makes you a swarm of 300 tiny versions of yourself - damn cool. Fans of clerics get cool spells like "Excommunicate", "Exile" and similar spells that focus on their role not only as divine warriors, but also as spiritual and moral leaders.
There are also some spells that would make the chaos magic-fans and hasardeurs among you cackle with glee - I know I did: "Bouncing Boom" is a ball of changing energy - ever wanted to kill your enemies with an elemental bouncy ball? Glorious! There are also new scrying spells like "Scryingjack" that lets you take control of hostile scrying attempts and finally a spell to counter "Find the Path". There are also cool plotspells like "Kiss of Death" - kiss an enemy and get the ability to kill them in the next 12 hours - great idea to subvert parties and trick PCs. Spells I didn't like...well. Ähem. Sorry. This time, I didn't notice any balance problems, there is not a single filler spell in this book.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting is top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the two-column standard and the b/w-artwork of this installment is cool. Furthermore, I liked the spells. ALL of them. They are cool, imaginative and I've just given you a small taste of the great spells herein. Even in the good 101-spells-series, this one stands out as an excellent, supremely cool book of spells. I'll rate this a full 5 stars. If you like spells, go ahead and check this out.
This 8th installment of the Faces of the Tarnished Souk series is 21 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving a whopping 16 pages of content - nice! Let's check it out!
As with all installments of the FoTS-series, we start off with a one-page introduction to the character, including information on dream-burning, a lore-section and a how-to-use sidebox for DMs looking to use the witch in their campaigns. Witch? Yep, we get full APG-support in this installment, further establishing this line to use more than just the relatively common core-rules. Just take a look at the cover. She looks mad, yes. And crazy. And boy, she is. Not in the nice mad-hatter kind of way, but rather in the potentially extremely deadly, unpleasant kind of way.She is truly a dastardly, drunken, mean-spirited proprietor of a place where the worst of the worse the Coliseum has to offer go to drink, battle and, perhaps even, die horribly.
Potential SPOILERS abound, thus I'd encourage potential players to skip to the conclusion.
Still here? All right.
Maelgatryx is actually the descendant of a VERY important major player of the coliseum and secretly wants to be accepted by this dreadful entity. Once again, her CR 20 incarnation is a beauty to behold (even when the coarse witch isn't) and gets two templates and a cool level that ensures that her drinking habit reflects heavily into her fighting style. She also gets a full stat-block for her cacodaemon familiar and a minor artifact weapon. Ready for some stroke of genius? There you go: Her signature weapon are the shrunken heads (!!!!) of a half-fiendish ettin (!!!) with whom she talks and which she uses as both a bola (!!!) AND a dire-flail. (!!!) Do I have to say more? I was cackling with diabolical glee all the time while reading this. We also get 8 new feats, centering on "witchy" stuff like creating shrunken heads and her familiar. That's not where the additional content stops, though: We also get a new witch's patron, "Dreams" and two new dream-traits, as per the Coliseum rules. Moreover, we get a new incantation (and I love incantations, especially when they're about adding insult to injury and consuming souls of fallen enemies!), 3 spells and 2 magical bodices for all the ladies, who, like mine, think that oxygen is for wusses.
Her mid-level incarnation also rocks, but, in contrast to other FoTS-installments, my favorite one is actually the low-level version, possibly due to her familiar at this level, "Mistah Eatey-Eye", an albino raven. Great and iconic idea. But that's not where this pdf stops: Rather, we get the rune-carved template and, more importantly, rules for variant tieflings: You can choose from 10 basic ability sets, depending on your fiendish ancestry, and yes, qlippoths and even onis are included. More importantly, you can roll (or choose if you take a feat) on a list of a whopping 100 abilities to customize the hell out of your tiefling.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the tried-and-true b/w-two-column standard and the B/w-artworks are nice. Writing adheres to the high and evocative quality we've come to expect from Rite Publishing and the amount of content for this price is rather unprecedented - we get so much more out of this installment than in even any of the other, chock-full pdfs of this series and the selection of e.g. cool items and support for incantations just rocks. Try as I might, I can't with any good conscience nit-pick at any part of this file. It's just a great little pdf and subsequently deserves ANOTHER 5-star-rating, which makes this the 3rd 5-star-verdict in a row for this series. Which is by the way the record for any rpg-product line I've reviewed so far. Congratulations!
This massive 115 pages full-color pdf has 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside of the front cover, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page explaining the glyphs that denote creature-types, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 107 pages for the content.
The first thing you'll notice is that this book is beautiful - full-color, cool artworks are provided for every monster and both formatting and layout are professional and adhere to the highest standards.
What do I seek in a monster-book? I want iconic beasts that are more than just another set of stats, that feature more than just variations of old tropes. I want the immediate impulse to use them in my games and, ideally, to yell: "Yeah, now that's it!" "Creepy Creatures" is a bestiary of rather horror-themed creature or at least bizarre ones, so let's take a look at some of my most and least favorite among them:
Rather lame ones:
-Adhaesus: Creature that clings to walls while fighting. The choker is much cooler and the artwork doesn't help the creature.
-Bisontaur: Centaur with Bisonlike-top. Boring.
-Hawkape: Owlbear-like creature. Owlbears are canon by now and while they never were my favorite creatures, Hawkapes are in my opinion unnecessary. Their abilities don't really set them apart.
-Frogodile: Another amalgam animal. Just as boring.
-Gibbering Terror: Incorporeal undead which feature the one truly boring/bad artwork of the book.
-Magma Kraken: Fire-elemental kraken creature. Disappointing for a CR 20 creature, this one has almost only elemental abilities.
-Star Jelly Ooze: This creature is a ooze-steed that looks like a long version of a Super Mario star with wings. I'm not kidding.
-Assassin Zombie: Assassins. Zombies. I don't think they go together or that you actually need a separate creature that fits this particular niche.
Cool creatures:
-Assassin Cat: A cat with brilliant abilities with supernatural abilities and a deadly toxin.
-Brain Wasp Swarm: Disturbing swarm of vermin.
-Clutch Hound: Cthulhoid dog with a great artwork.
-Corpse Worm: Shapechanger-worm - great variation of the doppelgänger-trope.
-Plague Dragon: Deadly dragon with cool abilities.
-Eye Parasite: One of the few truly despicable and creepy creatures in the book, this is a combination of a bodysnatcher and beholder-like abilities. Two thumbs up!
-Fleshwarper: Undead that drains charisma by warping flesh.
-Fungus, Ooze: Deadly plant that spawns oozes.
-Hair Golem: Disturbing Golem with a cool artwork.
-Hydra Grub: Multi-headed giant grub, delicacy for dragons.
-Terrorkin: Dream-demon that is half beautiful & half deformed - One of the best artworks i the book.
-Century Tortoise: Giant benevolent turtles that drain away the years of enemies.
-Fang Tree: Spiked, poisonous, carnivorous tree with a beautiful artwork.
-Windigo: Another version of the classic wendigo, this take on it has a mechanically interesting, cool snow and wind aura.
After the monsters, we also get information on the remarkable races (other Alluria products) and have the monsters listed by CR, roles, type, terrain and climate, which is nice.
Conclusion:
Layout and artwork are beautiful, editing and formatting are top-notch (I didn't notice any typos or glitches) and the pdf is extensively bookmarked. On the production-value side, there is nothing to complain. On the content-side, though, there are some problems, at least for me: I thought I'd get a bestiary of rather horror-themed critters and while the book delivers on "bizarre", it, at least in my opinion, does not deliver with regards to "creepy." Even more important: In contrast to e.g. Fey Folio, the monsters herein often fall in the rather bland category, be it fluff- or crunch-wise or just didn't capture my attention, which is a pity as some of them do rock. There are no lore-sections for the critters and most don't get too much fluff-text. More importantly, though, several of the background stories of the critters mention characters of races from Alluria's "Remarkable Races"-line. While I usually enjoy some plug-ins, I do think they went a bit over the top with regards to this book - some of the monsters are directly tied to the races and thus are harder to get or insert into your campaign than necessary. There is no b/w printer-friendly version and while the book is beautiful, it is also very taxing on your printer. While it's a long and beautiful book, it's also not too cheap. My final verdict, taking all of the above into consideration, will be 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 32 pages long, 1page front cover, 1page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 27 pages for 101 spells, so let's dive in!
After 3 pages of spell-lists we get the 101 spells. 5th level has traditionally been a level that made magic complex - abjurations, layered defenses and the first spells one can consider higher arcana - iconic. Instead of milling through all the spells, I'm going to tell you about the ones that grabbed my attention, positive or negative. Let's go! On the "cool-idea-side" we get "fell tree", which drops a tree on your opponents. Hilarious and kinda cool! "Flatten" makes you 2d, essentially opening a lot of creative potential for players to shine and use the spell in unconventional ways, especially in infiltrations.
"Pain Circuit" is a mechanically interesting spell - It opens up a conduct between you and your foe, making the foe experience your ailments and damages. My other favorite spell, though, has to be "Voice of Memories" - you can replace memories of the targets, change them etc. Story-writing gold for the GM and cool tactics for PCs, especially if they've screwed a given adventure up.
I've also noticed two spells I didn't care for: "Chastise" penalizes the enemy and deals non-lethal damage. If you've read some of my reviews, you'll notice that I'd usually love spells like that, offering to catch enemies alive. However, this spell actually gets the [evil]-descriptor. I get the "dealing unnecessary pain is evil"-argumentation, but this spell does not feel inherently evil, but could be arguably used for a plethora of "good" (e.g. NONLETHAL) ways. That's an easily corrected nitpick of mine, though. Of all the spells in the book, I felt that one was severely overpowered: "Spell Grounding". When within range of any rays and chain-spells (such as chain lightning), it is automatically drawn to you and is negated. I think the spell should only work for spells of level 5 or lower or at least offer an opposed caster-level check. That's about it with negatives, though. The only other negative thing I could say, is that there is a typo in the "Phantasmal Nymph"-spell, mentioning lich instead of nymph, an oversight from copying from the other cool phantasmal spell, "Phantasmal Lich".
Conclusion:
Editing is good, I only noticed one typo. Formatting and layout adhere to the b/w two-column standard by RiP. The file is extensively bookmarked and offers some very cool and imaginative spells for you. The b/w-artworks are also fine. Most of the spells rock, but I wasn't absolutely blown out of the water as e.g. with the 0-level spells. Due to my minor gripes with two of the spells and the aforementioned difference in coolness (at least from my point of view), I'll settle for a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 17 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of ads and 1 page SRD, leaving 12 pages for the new selection of racial traits, so let's check them out!
The first thing you'll notice about this pdf will be that it, in contrast to the other 101-books, is full-color and thus adheres to the beautiful layout you can also see in Rite Publishing's free Pathways magazines. Most of the artworks (all but one) subsequently also are full-color. Nice!
One of the coolest features of character generation is coming up with unique back stories, at least for me and my players. While we all know that adventurers tend to be somewhat above average individuals, we sometimes crave a special touch that has its own representation in the rules and sets them even further apart from their peers, be it via ancestry, culture or just by choice - modifications are fun and this book offers a plethora of new racial trait options for the core races. In order to review this book, I'll mention my favorite traits and my least favorite ones for the respective races, so let's check them out!
Dwarves, the stout, bearded defenders get a very cool ability that reflects their stoicism, granting them a bonus to DC to successfully use sense motive against them and enchantment resistance. On the very cool, far-out side, we can now also play dwarves that have been subjected to horrible experiments and cross-bred with lasher, granting them the ability to get reach at the expense of strength with elongated limbs. I LOVE how potentially creepy that is. I didn't care for "Tried and True", which lets the dwarf automatically succeed at any class skill if he/she rolls a 19 or 20. Sorry, but depending on the class this trait is over-powered.
Elves also can be customized to be more unique with these traits: While some of the ancestry traits (like pairing with a giant eagle) somewhat felt icky, gaining wings via the "Aellar Ancestry" is kinda cool. We also finally get a rules-representation for the elven immortality. We are also treated to some traits related to magic, making the feeling of the elves more in touch with magic. There was no trait I had a problem with.
Next up are the Gnomes, who get a very cool expansion of their tropes. Both clockworks and humor and witticism get their rules-representations and my favorite is actually "Misunderstood Genius", that lets the gnome choose ONE skill - on a roll of 19 or 20, he gets a +20 bonus to said skill. I like this in contrast to "Tried and True" due to still making it possible for failing a check and being limited to one skill. My least favorite one is "Well-traveled", which grants bonus languages. While useful in e.g. campaigns like mine, it might see less use in other campaigns. The lurker-ancestry (gnome/cloaker-crossbreeds), once again providing fodder for people who like it creepy like yours truly. Great traits.
Half-elves get a special treatment, essentially providing components and traits that make it possible to play a full-blown half-drow or just take bits and pieces due to distant ancestry. I especially liked "Adaptive Learning" - a concisely presented trait that lets you choose an additional class skill each time you enter a new base class. Once again, I've got nothing to complain.
Half-Orcs get an alternate, more Orcish attribute set and once again get an extremely cool ancestry: Fans of Illithids, rejoice and mind-blast/tentacle-suck your enemies dry! Better yet, this trait can be taken by any race! I tried to be nit-picky here, but I like all of the traits and see no real problems with them.
Then, we get the halflings: I absolutely loved the potential for mischief the "Blinkling Ancestry" provides - by mystical mergeing, these halflings may blink a limited number of times per day. If you're in for a rather gritty or savage setting "Cannibalistic Reputation" offers the jovial folk a rather sinister and badass reputation that helps his allies when flanking foes. Rather prefer the jovial halfling? "Corpulent" makes them tougher, but at the expense of speed and increased falling damage. There is one trait, though, that I absolutely LOATHE: "Common Sense". What sounds rather down-to-earth actually turns out to be extremely powerful: Once per day, as a free action, they can abort an action they attempted and RETCON their whole action, doing something else! The example is given of a halfling sneaking up to an enemy, trying to attack him. If he fails, he can remain hidden and do something different. If this was limited to one kind of roll, I wouldn't complain. But the action to retcon a whole round just feels tremendously unbalanced to me and will never find its way into my campaign.
After that, it's time for the humans to shine: My two favorites here are the "Child of Prophecy" that lets you accumulate markers for rolled 1s which you can convert to bonuses on other tasks and "Eidetic Memory", if only because the latter (as a feat in 3.5) has made several awesome stories possible in my former campaign. I was also kind of touched by "Personal Sacrifice", which grants a bonus to heal and lets them interpose themselves between an attacker and their ally.
Conclusion:
Layout is beautiful and adheres to the elegant full-color two-column-Pathways-standard. The artworks, also full color, are nice, though nothing to write home about - "just" ok to good. Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any flaws and the same goes for formatting. The crunch, as I've come to expect from Rite Publishing, teems with great ideas and most of the traits are solid. However, there also are some I consider to be rather on the OP, too powerful side. GMs should take care to read all the traits carefully and strike out those that don't fit into their respective campaigns power-levels. Thus, my final verdict will be 4 stars - a good book, but one that contains some rotten-egg-traits that rather felt like capstone abilities of classes than racial traits.
This pdf is 26 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside the front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page explaining how to read stat-blocks to novice DMs, 1 page back cover and 2 pages advertisement, leaving 18 pages for the centaurs, so let's have a look at them!
The TRIBEs-line of Raging Swan has provided us with some great sets of monstrous tribes to set upon our PCs and this latest installment is a take on the roaming tribe of centaur. In tradition with the recent Raging Swan files, we get a cool rhyming verse on the ToC-page that serves as a nice bardic verse to introduce and sum up the tribe. After that, we get an introduction to the peculiarities of the tribe, including appearance - we get a little table to customize the individuals, which I consider a ncie touch. Raging Swan products have a tradition of nice b/w-artwork and this one is no different - in fact, it goes further and features some beautiful, evocative pictures of the bleak moor, home to the centaurs and new setting beyond the tangled forest. Even better, we get a map of the new region. The write-up of the moor also includes extensive information on the terrain, serving as another proof that Creighton Broadhurst keeps in touch with his fan-base and continuously improves his products. The battle-feats to customize the individual tribes of the line have become a staple of the series, and this pdf is no exception - we get 5 new battle feats focusing on the centaur's giant eagles and devastating sling combat style. Fans of halflings might want to check this file out just for the sling-feats - from manystone to stunning hits and rapid sling loading, these new feats rocks. In contrast to other installments, though, we also get alternate class features for both the druid and the rangers of the centaurs and the full stats for their giant eagle companions. Furthermore, we get 4 new spells focusing on terrain control in the bog and a new magical sling as well as two kinds of enchanted sling ammunition and a new exotic double weapon (the double morningstar) for their berserkers. The sling and ammo get their own artworks.
The crunchy part of the pdf is separated into different section: Minor encounters, major encounters and characters.
Minor encounters feature the rank-in-file warriors, berserkers, druids and scouts as well as two sample groups. Major encounters include ready stat-blocks of both experienced berserkers, sling-specialists, veteran warriors and greater druids. They also come with two sample groups. Finally, we get the warleader of the centaurs, Corafel Ferareen (Advanced centaur barbarian 4/Moorland Ranger 3, CR 11) and Solavel Verynn (Advanced centaur druid of the bleak Moor 7, CR 11). Both get the raging swan NPC-treatment with mannerisms, distinguishing features, hooks, etc. However, Corafel, due to space-reasons, doesn't get much text. Solavel makes up for this by a cool adventure hook involving a debased fey. It also doesn't hurt that both get their own pieces of artwork.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any mistakes. Formatting adheres to the 2-column standard. Layout is clear, concise and printer-friendly and the deal includes an e-reader-friendly version of the pdf. The pdf is also extensively bookmarked for ease of reference. As has almost become tradition with Raging Swan publications, this pdf is extremely easy to use and endeavors to take as much weight as possible from the shoulders of the GM and easily succeeds in this. The sling-feats are cool, the spells rock, the fluff of the tribe is cool and rife with some nice ideas and the b/w-artworks of the moor are stunningly beautiful. Moreover, while it's a pity that the fluff of one of the NPCs fell a bit on the short side, the other one makes up for this and we get the quality statblocks we've come to expect of the series. The map and the potential connection to the upcoming minotaur-book is another factor in favor of this pdf. What else can I say? Raging Swan Press has once again surpassed its own by now ridiculously high standard, delivering an installment of the TRIBES-line that even surpasses the more than excellent Half-Goblins of the Tangled Forest. Ladies & Gentlemen, my final verdict is, as it should be, 5 stars - highly recommended, not only to people who want a tribe of centaurs.
This pdf is 3 pages, 1 page SRD, leaving 2 pages for the free critter, so let's give it a closer look.
Tha baykok is an undead hunter suitable for mid-to medium level parties that has a tremendous potential to be both creepy and memorable. Why? It has 2 cool signature abilities I haven't seen before: It uses invisible arrows and is invisible, even while attacking, to all but the target of its attacks. Now this makes for very cool predator-like encounters and awesome horror-potential. What about PCs trying to protect a target from a whole group of them? Awesome work. And it's free.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch and while there is no artwork, the fluff-text makes sure to adequately convey the coolness of the creature. Layout adheres to the printer-friendly two-column standard. Plus: This is FREE. You get a critter that is cooler than a lot of creatures you usually have to pay for and for the price diddly-squat. You have NO reason not to check this out. If there ever will be a Spes Magna monster book with foes of that quality, I'll be sure to pick it up.
This pdf is 8 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1page editorial/ToC and 1 page SRD, leaving 5 pages of content.
The pdf kicks off with an introduction to this pdf version of the great Quid Novi-newsletter (which I've been receiving for the better part of a year by now) and then goes on to the gaming material. Each section is prefaced by a cool, aptly-written short IC-text.
The pdf includes an affliction that is quite amusing: Boogie fever. We also get a cool leather gauntlet with positive energy abilities, a nice new haunt and of course: Penguins!
An encounter with an emperor penguin, penguins as animal companions, little penguins and a cool magical trap with... Penguins! We also get a nice new cantrip-spell for bards and a cool list of recommended reading.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the two-column standard and is printer-friendly b/w, editing and formatting are top-notch and I didn't notice any glitches. Content-wise, this issue walks the thin line between being funny and usable and succeeds at both. Due to the fact that the file is free, I can unanimously recommend the file: You literally have no reason not to download this and should in fact do so. My final verdict will be 5 stars.
This pdf is 32 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 27 pages for the 101 spells. So let's dive in!
After 4 pages of spell-lists, the new spells are introduced.
4th level has always been a peculiar one for my players and me: With dispel magic and the classic battle-spells like fireball and lightning bolt, 3rd level spells have traditionally been the ones my players anticipated. 4th level on the other hand...has almost always been one of the spell-levels that still has some spells left when the party rests. Subsequently, my players have not been too stoked about this level and thus, I'm hoping for this book to change that. Let's take a look whether it succeeds and which spells catch my eye, positive and negative.
Among the 101 spells were several that caught my eye, and I'll endeavor to give you some of the cool concepts contained herein: "Borrow Limb" lets you temporarily use an additional severed limb - creepy, cool, I love it. "Chaotic Blast" is a hasardeurs/chaos mages battle spell and extremely versatile. "Dying Vengeance" is a nice curse for bards."Fold" temporarily folds you into one square, making this an extremely cool plot/infiltration spell. "Foresight of the Just Warrior" is the first of several extremely cool paladin spells that caught my eye - it is feat-dependant, i.e. it can only be cast if you have power attack, but always makes your attack use the ideal amount of atk/damage exchange. "Hand of Time" speeds time for magic effects, essentially ending them faster - unfortunately also the beneficial ones. For all the people who want their paladin to become martyrs and make their character's ultimate sacrifice meaningful, we get "Last Act", which gives you one last round, even when you're dead, and "True Sacrifice", which sacrifices your life to resurrect another one. There were also some spells I didn't care too much for: "Boorishness" drops charisma of a foe to 1, essentially being a "save-or-suck"-spell for bards and sorcerors. "Sonic Blast" is a cone that deals sonic damage and just felt like filler. "Stomach Bloom" lets the target vomit up acid, damaging both him and an adjacent enemy. The damage is evenly divided between both. However, I'm not entirely sure, whether the target receives all the damage when there's no-one in vomiting range."Zone of Mishap" potentially makes casters fizzle a lot, but from the description I'm not entirely sure whether the caster is exempt from the spells effect or whether he has to check against his own spell.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any mistakes. The pdf is extensively bookmarked and layout adheres to the two-column-RiP-standard. The b/w-artworks are ok, though I've seen more beautiful ones in RiP-books. The quality of the crunch is top and I liked more spells than I didn't. 4th level becomes much more interesting thanks to this book and especially paladins get a LOT of awesome spells, though I would have loved to see the feat-concept further evolved. In spite of my praise, though, e.g. the 0- or 9th level installments felt a bit more imaginative to me. Thus, I'll settle for a final verdict of 4 stars - a good book of spells that helps casters make 4th level spells just as exciting as 3rd ones.
This pdf is 10 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 1 page counters, 2 pages of mini-sheets and 1 page combat & initiative tracker, leaving 4 pages for the Queen, so let's have a look at her!
All right. The Monsters of NeoExodus -line has provided us with some truly far-out creatures, but this one takes the "Wicked cool"-idea-cake: The chanting queen is the embodiment of a sentient spell that seeks to prolong and propagate its own existence by subverting the collective wills of people sent into a surreal paradise that solely exists in their minds by usage of said spell. The queen is a CR 19 foe, an incorporeal construct that is focused on utterly dominating her enemies and subverting them into the blissful utopia of her own addictive pseudo-reality. Once, her spell might have been designed to provide succor for the deranged and traumatized. Now, however, the chant may very well spread like an infectious wildfire of bliss and stupor and her mostly enchanting/dominating abilities reflect her non-lethal and yet deeply disturbing nature.
The Chant-scroll containing the rite of the old spell is also detailed and offers enough incentives for hard-pressed PCs to use the addictive scroll in spite of its risks. We also get information on DCs of Bardic knowledge etc.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the beautiful two-column full-color standard set by LPJr Design, formatting is top-notch, I noticed one minor punctuation error, but apart from that I didn't notice any glitches or problems with the abilities of the queen. Due to the low price, the cool concept and the additional information provided, I'll settle for a final score of 5 stars.
This pdf is 12 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, leaving 10 pages of new content, so let#s take a look at it.
We have all seen it in different media: Be it comics, cinema, books or even real life: Motivations that drive us to the point of being driven, principles that can and will not be broken by the respective people and, while constraining, also provide for a tremendous boost in capabilities at the same time, enabling them to endure and draw strength from their particular idiosyncrasies. This is made especially evident in moments where conflicting values between hero and villain or pro-and antagonist collide.
Why is it, then, that these iconic moments happen not too often in RPGs? First of all, there is a disconnection between players and PCs - the first reaction in many an otherwise great round will be to do what benefits the group in contrast to what the character might usually do. While some rpg-groups (Thanks for all the great years, fellows!) manage to transcend the benefits of the group for an "authentic" character reaction, it always leaves a shallow taste, even when XP-rewards are handed out later. There just is no immediate benefit for "driven" characters that adhere to a principle or flaw.
30 character motivations sets out to change that. Being portrayed as 15 pairs of opposable concepts, their mechanics are simple: When conflicted/confronted with a situation that goes against the motivation, a special check of d20+Int or Wis-mod is rolled against a DC set by the DM (guidelines are provided, basic DC is 15) - when successful, the PC can reign in his/her/its urges and act contrary to them. Otherwise the motivation has to be acted out, though not necessarily in self-destructive ways. From loyalty to lustfulness, honorable characters and cruelty - the range covered in the short space is quite interesting and offers something for just about anyone. Each motivation also comes with objects, i.e. concrete triggers: If your family has been slaughtered by goblinoids, you might have your lust for vengeance triggered in the face of these creatures.
Mechanically, the bonuses are not to be trifled with - they offer a higher power-gain than a feat (e.g. Brave: Immune to shaken and frightened conditions, +4 against fear and despair effects and reroll a fear/despair-related save once per day), thus a GM wishing to implement the rules should definitely make sure that situations come up that trigger the motivation to the detriment of the character in order to balance the benefits. On the other hand, the system facilitates e.g. playing characters like a smart fighter or a headstrong rogue.
We also get a new feat that gives you a bonus on the check to reign in the motivation.
Conclusion:
Layout is ok and adheres to the two-column standard. Editing is fine, too and the full-color artworks are also ok. The pdf is short, thus I won't detract a star from the rating due to the lack of bookmarks - at 10 pages the file is easily maneuverable. I should note that the sub-header of the book is "New Traits for Characters", which is kind of a misnomer - this system has nothing in common with the standard traits in PFRPG. That being said, to tackle the system on its own ground, it works, is concisely written and professionally presented. However, as always with systems like that, DM-and player-discretion is advised when using the system to prevent suicidal stunts and balance issues/too frequent character deaths. My only true points of criticism for the system are that a) the motivations and their benefits are not that balanced and that some grant significantly stronger bonuses than others. GM-discretion is advised; and b) we don't get more content - while 5 bucks is not expensive, it's at the upper range of the impulse-buy range. I hope that we'll see 30 more motivations in a future supplement - the concept does lend itself to expansion. My final verdict will thus be a straight 4 stars.
This pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 11 pages of content, so let's check it out!
In contrast to the other FoTS-reviews I've posted, I'll head this with an explicit SPOILER WARNING for players. Please stop reading now, as there is a special twist to this NPC that is impeded by out-game knowledge.
Still here? Ok. As in all the other installments of FoTS, we get three incarnations of a certain creature and this time they cover CRs 8, 14 and 21. However, due to the nature of the creature in question, we get 2 stat-blocks per incarnation, as the character is actually...a will-o'-wisp summoner. Yep, a will-o'-wisp that stopped wanting to feed on terror, has surpassed its disposition and wants to become mortal and interact with all the normal people. You heard me. As an interesting twist, it's eidolon is actually what you'll interact with and looks like a human bard. It actually goes as far as to consider his eidolon his link to reality and the potential vessel for its reverse transcendence from incorporeal creature to flesh and bone. Far-out, heh? It gets even better, though: We get a whole slew of new crunchy bits: Two metamagic feats for summoners to use still and silent spells on their eidolon, a recap of how to implant ioun stones as well as 9 ioun stones and a new amulet, bracers and belt. There also is a new summoner archetype containing 3 new evolution for monstrous summoners and their eidolons as well as two short and simple templates to make creatures tougher or craftier. The IC-introduction to the character is, as always in this series, very well-written and works well to establish the character. Even more so, it's how-to-section and dreamburning information provide ample ideas for the DM to not only use the character, but tap its potential to tackle philosophical questions on what can be considered "alive" and the nature of eidolons per se.
While the stat-blocks are not as complicated as I'd like them to be, the sheer imaginative potential and expansion on what I considered to be the dullest APG-class has to be applauded and more than makes up for this minor shortcoming.
Conclusion:
Editing and Formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the two-column RiP-standard. The artworks provided for some items and the characters are nice and wit the tremendous potential of the characters, I practically have to settle for a full-blown 5 stars. This character made me reconsider what a summoner can be and the APG-love is much appreciated - it just shows the tremendous largely untapped potential of the new classes. I hope to see more of them.
This pdf is 11 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page combat & initiative tracker, 2 pages mini-sheets, 1 page counters, 1 page SRD and editorial, leaving 5 pages for the Necrostructs, so let's take a closer look at them!
We get three stat-blocks of Necrostructs: Lesser (CR 7), normal (CR 10) and greater necrostructs (CR 13). Necrostructs are a terrifying combination of an undead and a construct.
Ok. We've seen that before. However, these takes on the trope come with magic immunity, energy drain, magic sense and a signature ability of permanently draining magic items: With a touch, necrostructs can drain and thus destroy magic items, though they get a will save. Cooler, though, they get a nice hive-mind-like quality to control them. Greater necrostructs become free-willed and subsequently sport skills and feats and go beyond simple progression by gaining a diseased breath weapon. They all come with information on how to construct them.
I don't have anything to complain rules-wise but one thing - the general capability to destroy magic items, while cool and painful for PCs, in my opinion should somehow scale depending on the power of the item. It somehow feels wrong to have almost artifact-level weapons be just as easily destroyed as regular weapons.
Conclusion:
Layout is beautiful and adheres to the full-color, two-column standard set for the series. The pdf is not bookmarked, but at that size, it's not a problem. While I encountered some errors regarding punctuation, they don't impede the usability of the creatures. I'm not entirely blasted away, but neither do I have much to complain about regarding the mechanics apart from the non-scaling magic-item-destruction-ability. Thus, my final verdict will be slightly above average, a 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 for the purpose of this platform.
This new installment of the fantastic maps series is 129 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page how-to-use the map-pack.
First we get a one-page version of the map, after that, we get 63 pages of a blown-up version of the map in full color for use with miniatures and a printer-friendly b/w version of the 63-page miniature map. The map also comes in a separate 111-page A4-format version for Europeans like yours truly that also includes the blown-up versions of the maps. We also get high resolution versions of the map as jpegs in both color and b/w both with and without grids. The maps also come with full map-tool support and the respective objects.
Conclusion:
This is a very straight-forward one to review - the map is absolutely STUNNING and the plethora of supported formulae just rock. We get normal and printer-friendly versions and even poor Europeans like yours truly are supported. Thus, due to the awesome map, I'll rate this beautiful map-pack a full 5 stars.
This installment of the fantastic maps series comes as a 52 page pdf, 1 page front cover.
The map presented is full color and first we get a one-page version of the map. After that, we get 25 pages of a full-color blown-up map for use with miniatures as well as the same blown up version in printer-friendly b/w.
As an additional benefit, we get high-res jpegs as well as files for use with maptool.
Conclusion:
The map is stunningly beautiful as I've come to expect from master cartographer Jonathan Roberts. Especially the full-color version is just awesome. However, in contrast to the more recent installments of the series, poor Europeans like yours truly don't get A4-format versions of the maps and the pdf also lacks bookmarks. Thus, I'll settle for a final verdict of 4 stars - still a great file for the low price.
This pdf is 18 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page of advertisement, leaving 14 pages for the new monsters.
First of all, I do know that this book has been published in the very beginning of PFRPG and thus suffers from some problems of the first publications for any system. I picked this along the other books up at a fire-sale and thus didn't pay full price. The 3 fell beasts-files have since been lying around on my HD and I only recently unearthed them. So, how well has this book aged? Let's take a look at the critters:
This installment of the Fell Beasts series is somewhat different from its two predecessors - there is an underlying theme to some of the critters, namely a corrupt, unique and powerful evil elemental that can create undead via a relatively simple template (and unfortunately gets no artwork) and the Netherlord, a undead caster with both a potential weakness adventurers can exploit as well as some cool unique abilities I haven't seen before. Especially the latter is quite cool. Friends of anthropomorphic humanoids get a badger-like species including the necessary information for them to be used as (player) characters. There is also a steam-punkish construct, that while agile, didn't grip me. It's an ok critter, though. Fans of the pulp days of old get Man-apes (guess what they are) and a halfling-version of deep ones and hybrids inspired by H.P.Lovecraft's classic foes. The scorpion guard from Akkadian/Sumerian mythology also makes a comeback as a fey, though I'm not entirely sure I'd make the creature a fey myself. Unfortunately, they don't get an artwork. We also get fish with razor -like fins as both solitary creatures and as a swarm, but I prefer the version of the critter from Jon Brazer Enterprises Book of Beasts. Finally, the is a variant cyclops (whose artwork I don't like) and an undead animated set of armor that mentions "Animate Dead" in the rules-section, but lacks any elaboration on how it animates the dead.
Conclusion:
This installment of fell beasts suffers from none of the rather obvious formatting errors of the predecessors. Layout is ok, though the B/w-parchment look in the background is still not too printer-friendly. The b/w-artworks range in quality from ok to nice. However, in contrast to the first two books, not every creature gets its own artwork. While I didn't notice as many editing errors as in installment 1 and 2, they are still there. While they are not as grievous as to deter from the usage of the creatures, said undead set of armor does suffer from exactly that. That being said, the netherlords are creatures that just ROCK and that I will actually use, which is more than can be said about the other creatures from the predecessors. While overall quality has improved, for the price and with regards to what you can get elsewhere, I'll rate this book 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2.
This book is 21 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page of advertisements, leaving 17 pages of content for the monsters, so let's check them out!
First of all, I do know that this book has been published in the very beginning of PFRPG and thus suffers from some problems of the first publications for any system. I picked this along the other books up at a fire-sale and thus didn't pay full price. The 3 fell beasts-files have since been lying around on my HD and I only recently unearthed them. So, how well has this book aged? Let's take a look at the critters:
First, we get Cecaelia, a kind of merfolk with the lower torso of an octopus. While they are a cool idea and come with information to make Cecaelia characters, their racial traits don't adhere to the PFRPG attribute standards and some special abilities in the section are not reprinted, but rather refer to the stat-block. Next up are 4 creatures that are versions of the undead elementals and suffer from one fact: They have been done better. In both FFG's 3.5.-elemental-book and the 3.5.-Ravenloft-book we had takes on the idea and both were better, more iconic etc. Fear Mongers are a kind of strife-causing incorporeal undead. Another nice idea that has been done better in other publications. Next up is a genie, the Hayula. This is actually one of the coolest genies I've seen in quite some time - they can rend elementals from their victims and control the separated elementals. Nice mechanics for their signature abilities. Malachite gargoyles are strong versions of gargoyles and come with information for the DM to make characters. Masters of Coils are humanoids that can summon serpents as weapons and can summon cobra swarms (stats provided). Another cool and original idea. Puppet Spiders are insects that animate the dead. I've also seen this done better in a Ravenloftbook and in Urban Creatures & Lairs there is a better, more imaginative version of the puppeteer. The Vile Mandrake, is a great take on the mandrake plant. It's an awesome idea and has some rather unique ability to establish a sympathetic bond.
Conclusion:
Layout, formatting and editing suffer from the same glaring problems as the first installment of the series. (See my review of Fell Beasts I) However, there are several iconic, new creatures that I did enjoy and while I didn't like several of the creatures, I can see myself using some of them. Due to the serious editing, formatting etc. glitches and some rather clunky mechanics, I'll settle for 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 22 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, leaving 18 pages for the monsters, so let's check them out!
First of all, I do know that this book has been published in the very beginning of PFRPG and thus suffers from some problems of the first publications for any system. I picked this along the other books up at a fire-sale and thus didn't pay full price. The 3 fell beasts-files have since been lying around on my HD and I only recently unearthed them. So, how well has this book aged? Let's take a look at the critters:
Air jellies are swarming critters that gather in swarms. I didn't get they are not poisonous and they lack the swarm traits they ought to have. The blistering demon has a cool aura, but the mechanics could have been clearer - as written, once you catch fire you can't extinguish it for 1d4 rounds. While sound in theory, I don't see it working in game due to means to quench fires. Additionally, the abilities are too fire-centric and non-damaging for a CR 15-enemy. Undead-creating Canopic Jars are the one monster in this book I really liked - great idea and they haven't been done yet. Dread Waif is yet ANOTHER take on the creepy child. Although I admit to liking the fluff, I was not impressed by the mechanics: Fear and Despair? Yawn. But wait: The radius of the despair-aura is 1 MILE. This fey (not undead, mind you) can literally drive whole settlements insane in a matter of days. While I don't like that it's a fey (just feels undead to me), the creature DOES make for a cool plot-villain due to this fact. Ghissics are wasp-like creatures that implant deadly larval eggs. I've seen that trope done better and creepier in e.g. 3.5's Hyperconscious. Greenmold Bones are undead infused by druidic magic. When hit by weapons, they penalize the weapon. Why this moldy infestation cannot be treated by anything but a craft-check, I don't know and frankly don't get. The ability feels weirdly disconnected from what should probably be a kind of poison or disease aura. Mercy Flowers trap their victims in illusory worlds and make for nice fey plants. Riverwraths are rather bland aquatic, troll-like fey. Shisa are a take on the foo dog/lion and lack a signature ability - yes, they are ok, but I felt they missed something unique. Finally, there's the Wicker Man. "AAAAHHH, NOT THE BEEESSS". Sorry. Couldn't resist. The problem here is, that e.g. in contrast to the 3.5-Fiend Folio version of the creature, the creature can't imprison enemies and gains no benefits/aura for being set ablaze are given, which I always considered the coolest thing about the creatures. Also, it's a construct sans creation notes.
Conclusion:
Layout is rather subpar, with several pages only half-full with text, resulting in wasted paper, especially annoying due to the b/w-parchment-look in the book. Most creatures could have used another pass at editing - the job was done shoddily at beast, with some typos, punctuation errors and more importantly, problems with the stat-blocks and abilities, rendering the use of the creatures harder than it ought to be. The b/w-artworks are mostly nice, though there are some rather boring ones among them. *cough* Mercy Flower, Riverwrath *cough*While the ideas for the critters almost all rock, I found a problem with either an ability that didn't strike my fancy mechanics-wise or a formatting glitch. More importantly, for the price you can get several vastly superior similar products - Book of Beasts: Monsters of the River Kingdoms just as one example. If you're willing to pay a bit more, I'd suggest Urban Creatures & Lairs by 0onegames or one of the excellent books by Alluria Publishing. Thus, in spite of the good ideas, my final verdict will be 1.5 stars, rounded down to 1 for the purpose of this plattform.
This pdf is 7 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/SRD, leaving 5 pages for the new monsters.
The Blightdaemon (CR 4) is a small, imp-like harbinger of disease and comes with a new disease. The Death Adept (CR 8) is an undead priest with divine casting abilities. Kind of like Huecava, but more focused on being an undead cleric. Mantians (CR 5) are giant, preying-mantis-like creatures that come with their own poison I don't get why they don't get keen claws or more damage on their primary attacks. Their defensive qualities list "Compound Eyes", but not what they do. I gather that, similar to Dreamscarred Press's Dromites, they grant the Mantians +2 to Perception checks, but I'm not sure whether that's already fractured in the +8 racial modifier to perception they get or whether having compound eyes grants them additional benefits. It should be noted that this does not impair the usability of the creature, though, so I won't detract a star. Remembrents (CR 3) are shrieking, corporeal undead with some spell-like abilities. Rock-Ophidians (CR 3) are minor dragon-like beings that can spit acid and for a limited amount of time harden their scales. This is a rather strange ability, as no in-game explanation or true reason is given for the creature to have this ability.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the 2-column standard and is printer-friendly b/w. The b/w-artwork the monsters get is old-school and for the price very nice. Editing could have been better - I noticed a relic "a" in one of the statblocks, an adjective/adverb-mix-up in the Remembrents text and a mix-up between horde/hoard in the Ophidian-text. Due to the shortness of the pdf, I think they could have been avoided. Apart from the typo-pet-peeves of mine, I have another point of criticism: In e.g. stark contrast to the "Monsters of the River Nations"-book, the critters in this pdf lack any iconic quality whatsoever. Mantians are Mantis-like creatures and do exactly what you'd expect. The same goes for the other beasts - they just feel generic. And unfortunately uninspired. There is nothing wrong with the creatures or their mechanics per se and their artworks are ok. However, none of them felt unique or inspired in a way that made me want to use them in my campaign. While the pdf is cheap, I still can't recommend it - due to the low price, my final verdict will be 2 stars.
This pdf is 30 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 blank page inside the front cover, 1 page to set the stage, 1 page that explains how to read the statblocks to novice PCs, 2 pages of editorial/ToC, 1 page back cover, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisements, leaving 21 pages of content.
Villains are, per definition, the primary antagonists of the heroes and often come with? Bingo, minions!
Thus we get a nice selection of minions for not only the villains in this book first: We get 2 assassins, 3 stat-blocks for mercenaries, 3 for rakes, 2 spies and 2 thugs, offering some nice alternatives from the stat-blocks in the Gamemaster's Guide. It should be noted that both the spies and assassins get their own names and are rather interesting choices for their roles.
Oh, and there is another rhymed verse at the beginning of the book on the ToC-page, which I mention due to considering having stuff like that in the back-hand a boon for DMs.
It should be noted that they all get the Raging Swan NPC-treatment, complete with background, mannerisms, distinguishing features etc. Now let's look at the villains: Teraim Arasten is a cruel, psychotic dwarf that is also an alcoholic. While somehow pathetic, he makes for a nevertheless chilling, cool adversary. Firhar Luedul is a mage who seeks lichdom to combat his Thanatophobia. Eiluanna Miaasar is an elven maid ravaged by orcs who seeks to quench her trauma in bloodshed. Her tragedy and complex psychology make her an interesting enemy. Myghal Nankeris is an insane monk who seeks to attain enlightenment via slaughtering enemies - his section unfortunately features two typos. Digory Odgers is a guildmaster in the making from the gutter who may make for a cool godfather-like crime-lord. Perran Gongye is an assassin's legend in the making who understands the importance of successful PR. Cornes Solethar is a sorceror aligned with the abyss and allied with undead. His only empathy is reserved to a dog. His section also contains three typos. More importantly, though, there is a discrepancy between his fluff and crunch: Although he is supposed to have a genius-like intelligence, he only sports an Int-score of 12. While is Cha is high as a sorceror, force of personality alone not a genius makes in my opinion.
Conclusion:
Formatting adheres to the printer-friendly two-column b/w-standard set by Raging Swan and Layout also is top-notch. The b/w-artworks, while nice, are not as cool as in other Raging Swan books, but I guess that's personal preference. It should be noted that as part of the dual-format pdf-initiative a pdf-reader-friendly version is included in the deal. More importantly, though, some of the characters are not as absolutely awesome as in other Raging Swan Press releases like "Antipaladins" or "Fellowship of the Blackened Oak" - while generic and easy to implement in any given campaign setting, Raging Swan NPCs usually still feel unique and like true characters. However, in "Villains" some of the characters feel like cardbox cut-outs - especially Myghal and Cornes feel rather bland and uninspired, especially in contrast to e.g. Teraim, Perran, Firhar and Eiluanna. Due to that and the minor editing glitches, I'll settle for a final verdict of 4 stars -still a very good file, but not as perfect as e.g. Antipaladins.
This pdf is 14 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 9 pages for the new base-class of the Luckbringer. Let's check it out!
After a great IC-introduction to the new luckbringer-class (which ranks among the coolest and most amusing ones I've read by Rite Publishing), we are introduced to the new class. Mechanically, it's a medium BAB, good ref and will-saves, d8, 6+Int modifier non-spellcasting class somewhere along the lines of Super Genius Games Time Thief in the manner that the class focuses on cool abilities that can be activated via free actions. The key difference, of course, being that the abilities center around luck (or lack thereof) rather than time. So, let me explain a bit further:
The base ability of the class is called moment of chance and can be used to get a save to avoid being dropped below 0 HP, add a bonus or penalty to checks or reroll one roll within 100 ft. The class gets 3+level points for this ability, ensuring that it gets additional uses every level. You think that is cool?
At second level and each even level after that, they get to choose a so-called Improbable ability from 11 different abilities. These abilities do use moment of chance points and range from becoming better at escaping, get benefits of critical feats, force miss chances upon enemies or negate them, take 20 if they normally couldn't etc. It should be noted that almost all abilities can be used in favor of the luckbringer or to the detriment of opponents, necessitating fair scaling saving throws mostly dependent of level on Cha-mod of the luckbringer. If you're like me, you do now get what archetype this class lends itself to. The coolest ability, by far, though, is Hazard (Su) : With this ability, the luckbringer can cause a damaging, improbable mishap to happen to an enemy, which is DAMN cool - both the player and the DM can each and every time determine specific, extremely improbable mishaps. This has to be one of the best abilities to encourage funny/cool ideas at the table ever.
Luckbringers get even more choices, though: Over the course of their 20 levels, they can choose up to 6 "Nothing is Written"-powers from a list of 10, which are not dependent on the pool and range from rolling twice a random roll and taking the better result, over evasion up to being extremely lucky when escaping/giving chase. Especially the latter is plain awesome for both PCs and NPCs. "You'll NEVER catch me!" *cackles with glee*
Need more customization opportunities? The class has more to offer: Luckbringers also get to choose from up to 5 longshot powers from a list of 7, which range from a pool of freely usable bonuses per day over making botches crits and vice versa up to automatically getting an item via improbable means.
Beginning at 10th level, the list of Improbable abilities you get to choose from is expanded upon by 11 additional powers, some improving other abilities while others are brand-new, resulting in a highly customizable class.
The capstone ability is also great - the luckbringer summons a landslide, supercell-lightning-bolt or something alike on his enemy, causing 200 points damage. Nice and just as cool as Hazard.
Conclusion:
The pieces of b/w-artwork by Toby Gregory are nice, the public domain art also fits the theme. Layout adheres to the two-column classic RiP-standard. Formatting is top-notch. Editing was flawless up to the final two pages, where some minor errors have found their way into the book. The pdf is extensively book-marked, making electronic reference at the table easy. The IC-writing for which I love almost all RiP-products reaches a high point in this pdf, being among the most entertaining and yet cool, offering a nice gender-twisted touch to the traditional scoundrel myths and behaviors. Oh. That was it, wasn't it? The bad "S"-word. Yep. I said it. Scoundrel. Like in "Complete Scoundrel." Before you start to get reflexive headaches due to remembering how broken that book was, let me assure you: Luckbringer is NOTHING like Complete Scoundrel. Yes, it focuses on the players who want to play the perpetually lucky hero, but everything Complete Scoundrel did wrong, Secrets of the Luckbringer does right and the few things CS did ok, this pdf improves upon. BIG TIME. Mechanic-wise there nothing to complain about. The IC-writing is glorious and even in the rules-section I really can only list one point of criticism: I encountered three minor editing glitches on the last 2 pages. While they did not really deter all too much from me understanding anything, they just jumped at me due to the more or less flawless nature of the rest of the pdf. I would have loved to see more powers, though there are enough to make them versatile indeed. Thus, my final conclusion will be as follows: If you don't care about some minor editing glitches in an otherwise completely awesome, cheap class-book, this pdf is 5 stars. If you're as pedantic as I am, consider it 4.5 stars. In any case, Steven D. Russell has once again created a great new class and the only question I'd like to ask is: When do we get more support for the luckbringer? I'd definitely love to see a sequel.
This pdf is 80 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 2 pages mini-sheets, 2 pages char-sheet and 1 page combat & initiative tracker, leaving 73 pages for the folding circle, so let's check them out!
Detailing a kind of evil terrorist/guerilla-army led by powerful antagonists, the first PFRPG-compatible book of the "Enemies of NeoExodus"-line kicks off as it should, with the narrative of how the group of beings that make up the inner circle of the organization came together. The narrative is concisely and yet compellingly written and had me actually want to continue reading. The methodology of the group is explained, but the book does not stop there - we get paragraphs that explain which leaders are used for which tasks, which symbols they use ( great for foreshadowing) and even some unusual details of their headquarter. On the mechanical side, we also get a short table of the leadership-effects of individual soldiers fighting under the command of leaders.
The commanders are:
-Makesh the Undying, the glue that holds the group together. A human turned divine construct, he, as the other leaders, is presented in several incarnations: CR 4, 10, 14, 20 and 24. The stat-blocks come with EXTENSIVE tactics sections and even goes one step further than just progressing the stats- depending on the incarnation, he actually gets some cool completely unique abilities related to his background story and even his signature weapon is updated in each incarnation.
-Nysska, the renegade exodite assassin among them (CR 3, 7, 11, 15, 19) also gets this versatile treatment, her stats also containing signature poisons, tactics dependant on the level of her incarnation and once again unique signature abilities.
-The Destroyer, Enuka-incarnation of war and destruction also comes in several incarnations: Cr 5, 9, 13, 17, 21. Being the one creature that more or less could kill Makesh, this incarnation of destruction, as the other two, comes with cool signature abilities like a rebirth in blood or the ability to suddenly adapt to incoming energy. Or rip bone quills from his body and throw them at his enemy.
-Emok Zenyaka, a demon of corruption and life sealed in the body of a now genderless Prymidian. He comes as CR 2, 6, 10, 14, 19 and comes with disease-associated attacks and a special ability that defines how he uses his considerable magic power and culminating in terrible abilities that define how he can destroy and taint his enemies.
-Haru Anon, the condensed and combined terror and pain of both thousands of souls slain by Makesh (who is one day supposed to lead them to the afterlife) and his former tribesmen was bound into a hybrid undead/construct form by Emok. It comes as CR 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and actually has extremely cool ability progressions. As the other leaders, this IMMENSELY cool thing gets terrible destructive powers. Wow.
Next up, we get sections on how the organization of the folding circle interacts with the other powers of Exodus. However, apart from fluff, we also get mechanical benefits in the respective regions for members, even presenting feats to become the protégé of the respective leader, sans Haru Anon, of course, who is not interested in followers.
Followers...we get those, too: For example Seeker-in-Flame, a CR 10 burning Dalrean ranger with some very cool unique abilities and his mephit companion. Or Axo, crystalline Cynean apprentice to Emok who can focus arcane energy like a destructive lens.
Then, there is the Brotherhood. A sub-organization of assassins, they come just as varied and detailed in background as their leaders, though they "only" get one stat-block as well. From an Enuk-warrior who was fused with an elemental, a fate-twisting assassin wielding an artifact, a druid touched by elemental air, a Sasori monk possessed by an inner fire that can even create him anew, a Cavian sorceror disconnected from the hive-mind and muted in both bloodline, a corrupted nature-spirit and finally, a MPD-afflicted, undead child with terrible power over sleep.
Conclusion:
Layout is just as beautiful as you would expect it, from LPJr Design. What I didn't expect, though, was how both writing and editing have improved in this file in comparison to others I've seen. I've scarcely encountered typos, to be precise, 2, (quite a feat with a book of this size) and stumbled across no glaring errors. While there are minor formatting glitches (I e.g. noticed a section that was supposed to be bold and wasn't), they are few and far between - I noticed 2 formatting glitches on 73 pages with a similar number of very minor punctuation errors that did not deter from my ability to understand or enjoy the text. The artwork in most LPJr-books rocks. This is even more true in this one - the full-color illustrations (One for EACH character) are beauties and only the portrait of ram (the corrupt nature spirit) didn't match up to a quality you could potentially see in a Paizo product. Especially the portrait of Haru Anon just blew me away and even surpasses the usually excellent artworks of NeoExodus books. More importantly, the NPCs detailed herein make AWESOME villains. Seriously. Just about every character comes with signature abilities, a new magic item or artifact or similar powers that would qualify them as being a major antagonist for your PCs. Even if you only use one of them, he/she/it is almost guaranteed to surprise your PCs. Add to that the fact that each one gets at least a page of background and you're in for quite a treat. While I have to admit that I didn't do the math on everyone of them, I noticed no obvious glaring inconsistencies and quite frankly, at this level I don't really care. The writing is cool, the NPCs rock, their organization is unique in design and agenda and the small bits and pieces like the aforementioned leadership bonuses make for a great reading experience. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to think about how to implement them in my campaign and which one to throw first at my PCs. What? I forgot the rating? 5 stars - this is by far the best book by LPJr Design I've read so far and I heartily recommend it to just about any DM looking for deadly villains, even ones who don't intend to play in NeoExodus. With cosmetic changes, these fellows can be the final bosses of your campaign.
This pdf is 28 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 23 pages for the orbs, so let's take a look at them!
Orbs have long been a rather neglected iconic piece of mage's apparel in D&D and PFRPG and this pdf sets out to change that. At first sight it seems like all the slots are taken for magic items, so what do orbs do? Well, they serve as a magic amplifier of a sorts, which I consider a good idea.
The orbs range from 8000 GP to artifact-level and the pdf kicks off with a nice piece of IC-writing. Additionally, we get two feats, one to craft orbs and one to channel spell-like abilities as well as through the orbs along some insight into the design-process. The items come with short descriptions, which is a nice plus. Without further ado, these are the orbs:
-Dragonscale Orb: Depending on the color, they can change the energy of a spell and grant minor spell-like abilities and can once per day panic opponents.
-Duelist's Orb: +5 to identify spells and +5 to DCs of having the own spells being identified. Additionally, counterspell as a free action once per day.
-Lens of Spell Distortion: Can distort own area-spells so they don't hit specific squares and 3/day focus an area-spell on a single target, with +2 to the DC.
-Miser's Orb: Ignore 5000 GP of material components per day.
-Orb of Abjuration: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Acid: +1 DC to acid-spells, 3/day sicken enemy damaged by acid.
-Orb of Alacrity: +10 ft movement, 3/day cast a spell that would take a full round as a standard action.
-Orb of Alignments: Penalizes enemies' saves the farther they are away from your alignment. Additionally, you can detect good, evil, law and chaos per will.
-Orb of Blasting: Sacrifice spell-levels to deal raw force damage. Now this one is iconic and cool!
-Orb of Burdens: +50 lbs carrying capacity for purpose of movement and encumbrance. When damaging an enemy, he can 3/day choose to lower the creatures carrying capacity by 50 lbs.
-Orb of Conjuration: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Counterspells: +2 to caster-level checks to counter spells, 3/day retain spell used to counter after countering.
-Orb of the Damned: Spells with the death-descriptor can be made to annihilate enemies, preventing resurrection, but also incurring a -4 penalty.
-Orb of Divination: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Electricity: +1 DC to electricity-spells, 3/day stun enemy damaged for 1 round.
-Orb of Elemental Acid: +2 to caster-level for purpose of casting acid-spells, can transform damage to acid damage.
-Orb of Elemental Fire: +2 to caster-level for purpose of casting fire-spells, can transform damage to fire damage.
-Orb of Elemental Ice: +2 to caster-level for purpose of casting ice-spells, can transform damage to ice damage.
-Orb of Elemental Lightning: +2 to caster-level for purpose of casting lightning-spells, can transform damage to electricity damage.
-Orb of Empowered Spell Mastery: Gain the empower spell metamagic feat for as long as the owner has the orb. Spontaneous casters can cast empowered spells without increasing the casting time. Preparing casters can decrease the additional levels by the metamagic feat by one.
-Orb of Enchantment: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Evocation: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Fear: 3/day, when casting a spell with the fear-descriptor, additionally penalize enemies with 1/2 level to atk and damage.
-Orb of Flames: +1 DC to acid-spells, 3/day make enemy catch fire.
-Orb of Frost: +1 DC to cold-spells, 3/day slow enemy damaged by frost.
-Orb of Illusion: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Invisibility: +5 to Stealth, 1/day enable people subject to invisibility to bypass e.g. tremorsense etc.
-Orb of Kings: +6 to Cha-based skill-checks. 1/day when casting a spell of the charm-subschool, target +1 creature.
-Orb of Maximized Spell Mastery: Gain the maximize spell metamagic feat for as long as the owner has the orb. Spontaneous casters can cast maximized spells without increasing the casting time. Preparing casters can decrease the additional levels by the metamagic feat by one.
-Orb of Memory: + to Concentration. 1/day as a swift action prepare a spell cast in the last 24 hours.
-Orb of Necromancy: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Piercing Spells: +1 to checks to overcome spell resistance. 3/day sacrifice an unused spell-slot or prepared spell to lower the spell resistance of a target by 2 times the level of the sacrificed spell.
-Orb of Rage: You can cast spells while in rage or under the effect of the spell. Gain barbarian rage for 5 rounds per day or if you already have barbarian rage, gain + 5 rounds of Rage per day.
-Orb of Refraction: +1 to all ray attacks. 1/day make a ray hit an additional target with a ray.
-Orb of Segments: Reduce number of segments required by a segmented spell by 1. If casting a segmented spell, you can add one segment for +2 to the spell's DC. YOu don't know what segmented spells are? Go ahead and check out Advanced Arcana by NWN - this book scored high on my list of top-3pp-products in 2010.
-Orb of Shadows: 3/day cast any spell you know without using slots or preparing it. The spell is only half-real and can thus be disbelieved.
-Orb of Sickness: 3/day inflict a disease on enemies hit by your spell. DC is reduced by 2, though.
-Orb of Spell Power: 3/day add +1 to a spell's DC. Alternatively, use all 3 uses to recharge one charge in a staff.
-Orb of Subdual: You can opt to make a spell non-lethal. Awesome item!
-Orb of Swirling Color: 3/day fascinate enemies when you cast a spell, 1/day can use scintillating pattern.
-Orb of Thralls: +4 to opposed Cha-checks to control charmed/dominated creatures. 1/day take control of dominated creature as with magic jar.
-Orb of Transmutation: +1 to DC of spells of the school, can spontaneously change spells to abjuration spells from a short list.
-Orb of Unnatural Strength: When you polymorph a target, grant it +4 Str. 1/day sacrifice a spell of the polymorph-subschool to grant a creature an enhancement to Str of the sacrificed spell- level times 2.
-Orb of Widened Spell Mastery: Gain the widen spell metamagic feat for as long as the owner has the orb. Spontaneous casters can cast widened spells without increasing the casting time. Preparing casters can decrease the additional levels by the metamagic feat by one.
-Summoning Stone: Summoning-subschool spells are automatically extended, 1/day summon a creature as per summon monster IX.
Minor Artifacts:
-Eye of Souls:Focus for spells that trap souls. The souls can be used to power spells.
-Orb of Demon Command: Devil-crafted orbs that can summon and control demons and grant you major bonuses against them.
-Orb of the Archmage: +2 to AC, atk, saving throws, own spells cannot be countered and only be dispelled by disjunction. 3/day ignore spell resistance.
-The Skull of Il'Shabosh: Skull of a deadly demon, the wearer can control caster-level times 4 HD undead. Creatures slain by the caster rise as undead.
This pdf is 32 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 28 pages of content, so let's check these mercenaries out!
After an introduction to the mercenary company and some adventure outlines/plot hooks, we get information on hiring the mercenaries for" active" or "passive" duties (i.e. guard duty vs. adventuring/preventing assassinations) as well as information to joining the Blackshire Mercenaries, improving one's standing in the guild as well as how jobs are granted to soldiers and spending influence in the guild. I.e. we actually get tables and information on how to both gain influence and on how to spend it/what benefits you can get in the guild.
So what is the guild and how does it work? In a work of dire rat infestations, marauding wyvern and vicious orc press gangs, adventurers always can find work. What, however, if none of these specialists are available? What if one has already been betrayed by powerful adventurers and thus rather want specialists who may ask for a steep price, but adhere to professional work ethics? That's what the Blackshire Company is for. Driven by pragmatism and a desire to earn money and get the job done rather than adhere to chivalrous codes of honor and conduct, they are hardened, grizzled and yet uncompromising problem-solvers. Depending on the level of the member and the amount of influence one has, specific benefits are available, lending using the guild towards e.g. prolonged campaigns with PCs getting ranks in the guild.
The guild also gets its own Prestige Class (to join, you of course have to have sufficient influence with the guild), the Blackshire Exemplar.
The 10-level-PrC gets d10, 2+Int skills per levels, a good BAB-progression, a medium fort-save and centers around professionalism-abilities like immunity to fear and can learn from a list of 13 special guild maneuvers. The guild maneuvers are powerful, but adequately represent the fighting style of the guild. Their capstone-ability lets them make a full attack as a standard action, though. OUCH. This ability, even for a capstone-ability feels rather powerful and lends itself to potential abuse. They also come with a lore-section.
Next up in the book are the sample NPCs:
The section contains three dwarven brothers that learned to expertly coordinate their effort, an example of an evil as well as an example of a good chapter-head, a duelist-style fighter, a low-level thug and a legend among the companies.
Conclusion:
The organization per se is very well presented - you can easily imagine this very capitalistic and professional approach to being mercenaries. The company can serve as anything you'd like - as foils for the PCs, as allies, as a home away from home or as all of the above. Presentation of the benefits and tracking rank in the guild rock and are detailed enough to be of use even to the most novice of DMs. The company can easily be dropped in into just about ANY campaign and is sufficiently modular. I'll go even so far as to propose that they make a nice elite-order in rather low-magic settings. However, there are also some downsides to this file: While I like the Blackshire Exemplar class, I think that the capstone ability is too strong and I would have loved to see more guild techniques. The NPCs, while well-designed and with some APG-support, did not necessarily impress me that much - on the one side, they may be well-crafted, but somehow they felt a bit unspecific and don't come with their rank specified in the guild. I also would have loved to see stats for the 3 leaders of the guild. Another problem is, that while the company is easy to implement and is well and extensively detailed, but it somehow lacks iconic powers and also feels generic in the negative sense. The short write-up of the Blackblade mercenary organization from RiP' s "Elspeth Blackblade" somehow felt more compelling to me.
Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any mistakes. Layout is fine, too, although it adheres to the used-parchment-look of NWN, thus being not too printer-friendly. The mostly public domain art fits the topic. Formatting is nice, there is only one glitch of a line in the last stat-block - half of one line is hidden beneath another line. The pdf is extensively bookmarked.
My final verdict for this pdf will take the low price and the amount of content into account. Due to the formatting glitch and the minor problems I encountered, I'd usually settle for 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3. However, I couldn't name a single "Guild"-book apart from this one and it is well-crafted for a VERY low price. Thus, I'll round my final verdict up to 4 - it's good to see a fully-detailed and professionally presented guild out there, even if it is a rather generic one. I hope to see more.
This pdf is 9 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial and ToC and 1 page SRD, leaving 6 pages for the monsters, one per page, so let's dive in!
You actually get two versions of the book, one beautiful full-color version and one printer-friendly b/w-version. Nice.
The monsters are:
-Daemon, Ungudaemon (CR 5): A disturbing, almost cthulhoid-looking creature that tries to make serial killers out of regular people.
- Devil, Feathered (CR 7): Bureaucrats of hell, they also serve as bankers and get cool rune-like abilities.
-Div, Khorkhore (CR 13): Gluttony and famine-associated creature that can cause people to consume everything due to lethal hunger. I didn't like the artwork, though.
-Kyton, Baboulas (CR 8): Also known as Scissormen, these nobles of Kytons absolutely rock - they use deadly, mutilating scissors and are the consummate sadists. I love them.
-Hanakada Oni (CR10): Deadly Oni that taught the Tengu their swordmastery. Can use their fans to create hurricane-level winds. Another very cool monster.
-Piasa (CR 17): An incarnation of the Abyss's fury, these beasts might not be too bright, but they have tremendous destructive potential.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, the artworks by Heather Frazier are beautiful, especially for the low price. While I didn't notice any mistakes, I found the fact that the Baboulas-artwork separates the text in the middle, which made it a bit harder to read, but that's nitpicking. More importantly, I didn't notice any mistakes with regards to statblocks and all the monsters felt somehow iconic and as-of-yet unseen rather than redundant. The pdfs don't feature bookmarks, but at such a short length, I won't detract a star for it. What's my final verdict, then? Due to there being two files, one full-color and one printer-friendly, the high quality of the monster write-ups, the very well editing job etc., I'll ignore my minor points of criticism (the formatting decision and the one artwork I didn't enjoy): My final verdict is 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
I actually own only the dead tree copy of this campaign setting, so I'll break my usual format for this review. The Realms of Twilight Campaign Setting comes as a massive 250+ pages hardcover book, including two pages of character sheets and 1 page map. After a page of editorial and a page ToC, we get 2 pages introduction and overview of the contents. After that, we get introduced into the world of Relistan.
One of the things you immediately notice, is that the b/w-artwork is stunning and ranks among the best you can find in any 3pp-books.
Chapter 1 details the fundamentals of the world (8 pages): Relistan is a world ravaged by two grand cataclysms: The first, a rite by the shadow fey, has permanently blotted out the sun, casting the world in a permanent twilight. Relistan also once was a planar hub and there have been massive invasions of outsiders in the so-called gate-wars, further crushing civilizations. Due to the gods seeking to annihilate dragon-kind, the last survivor of the original Relistan-dragon-race (there seem to be more from other places), in rage and desperation, managed to use an artifact to become a deity and close the gates. Driven insane by the sudden ascension, his rage further ravaged the already beaten world. Sounds cataclysmic? Surprisingly, it isn't all that bad on the world. The 3 moons seem to provide enough light for economies to work and plants to grow (Hey, it's magic and the leaking planar gateways actually serves as an explanation that satisfies me!) and there are ample civilizations out there on the 5 continents of Relistan.
Chapter 2 details Kesuril, the civilized lands (33 pages) and kicks off, as every chapter, with an IC-legend on the history of the continent: This continent is the one most reminiscent of temperate climate standard fantasy realms, but each city/nation gets some serious twist: There for example is a rather druidic nation led by lycanthropes who learn to control their urges. We also get e.g. a city famous for its college, a lizardfolk kingdom and the biggest metropolis of the world that can be seen on the cover, secluded in a crystal pyramid complete with a drow emperor and a false sun inside. Each nation/town is presented with some paragraphs on one or 2 authority figures and while there is information on the classes of said characters, no stats or levels are provided. Each nation/city also comes with information on diplomatic relations with neighbors. These pieces of information are also given in the other chapters, so don't be alarmed by me not mentioning them again.
Chapter 3 (26 pages) introduces us to Slarinca, the second continent, has its nation of elves, a nation of gnomes known for their sorcerous aptitude as well as human kingdoms aligned with the traditional elements (and a utopia aligned with light). These kingdoms adhere to an eastern, Chinese-influenced Nomenclature and structure.
Chapter 4 (18 pages)details the desert continent Shirán that consists of the almost impregnable resting place of the slumbering dragon-turned-deity and nations that are led by members of a rather evil (or at least neutral) planar group of adventurers. The chapter also provides one page of rules-recap for heat-dangers.
Chapter 5 (13 pages) provides us with information on Ezalyth, the frozen continent of Relistan, complete with monasteries, a nation of snow elves, giants and a settlement on the verge of a glacier. There is also information on dangers of the cold and ice.
Chapter 6 offers information on Cylthia (18 pages), a continent of trackless jungles (Mostly consisting of "The trackless Jungle") and a savannah with warring nations as well as a dwarven nation.
Chapter 7 (8 pages) details the seas and oceans of Relistan, e.g. providing rules for the random bursts of fire that erupt from the aptly-named Shadefire-sea. This is something I would have loved to see more often - little bits of rules for these locations that serve to enhance their uniqueness not only in description, but also in rules-terms.
Chapter 8 is the beginning of the rules-section of the book and focuses on classes. (27 pages)
The chapter contains an alchemist base-class, the combat alchemist. It is here that I want to address something - this book was released prior to the APG and some of the rules and content will reflect that. The combat alchemist base-class gets d8 HP, 4+Int skills per level, a bad BAB-progression and good ref- and will-saves. The basic idea is somewhat similar to the model used for psionics: The combat alchemist gets a certain number of mixture points and can use them to create effects of the formulae he has already learned. All of these so-called mixtures can be individually enhanced by what is called "experimentation" and is essentially a way to boost the effects of the alchemical mixture in question. To ensure balanced play, the mixtures have been divided in the classical 9 levels, restricting access to the more powerful mixtures at lower levels. The class is expertly designed and crafted and I really do like it. Unfortunately, the alchemist-class by Paizo is one of my 2 favorites from the APG, so I personally settle for him. However, if you want to check out a cool alchemical base-class and want something different, this one might actually interest you.
Next up are the prestige Classes. Each comes with a sample NPC. However, not all adhere to PFRPG-design-standards, some of them having levels that have no spell progression, bonus feat or other gain apart from saves and bab-progression:
-Acolyte of Twilight (d8, 2+Int skills per level, medium BAB, good will save, 5 of 10 levels spell progression): This class is a divine caster that is similar to the dragon acolyte, but representing the duality of the twilight dragon deity. Didn't strike me as too exciting apart from the cool associated deity.
-Disciple of Shadows (d8, medium BAB, almost good progression for fort- and will saves [+6 Fort and Will save at 10th level], 2+Int skills, 5 levels spell progression): Two-bladed sword wielding holy warrior of the church of Steelight Shadowborn. He becomes better at wielding his signature weapon and some shadow-blade abilities, transforming to native outsiders in the end. Okay class.
-Elemental Fist (d8, good BAB-progression, medium fort, ref and will-saves, 4+Int skills, continues improving monk abilities): Monk-like class that gains the abilities to use elemental shrouds that damage attackers. Nice class, but has 2 "dead" levels.
- Fire Dancer (d8, almost good BAB-progression (+9 at 10th level), medium ref save, 4+Int skills, 5 levels of spell progression): Bard-Prc that gets nice, albeit a bit weak abilities to use fire-like abilities with their dance.
-Hunter of the Wastes (d8, good BAB-progression, almost good progression for fort- and ref saves [+6 Fort and Will save at 10th level], 4+Int skills: Hunter of undead creatures from negative-energy-infused wasteland. Can detect undead and resist incorporeal undead and their attacks. Rather bland specialty hunter with 3 "dead" levels.
-Shadow Speaker (d8, +5 over 10 levels BAB-progression, almost good progression for ref- and will saves [+6 Fort and Will save at 10th level], 6+Int skills: Rogue-like class that improves sneak attack and abilities to communicate and summon shadows and see in the darkness as well as a greater shadow form. Ok supernatural rogue class.
To be concluded in the product discussion. (Post 93)
This pdf is 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 10 pages of content - Nice!
Following my format for FotS-reviews, I'll start with the lowest-CR-incarnations and work my way up, so let's go! Ninyantë is a very interesting NPC - why?
Well, her low-level incarnations is:
- Ninyantë (Amalgam human dark naga shadow assassin 4, CR 8): Yep, we get a complex template base race AND some love for one of my favorite base-classes from SGG. How cool is that? Even better, all the information to run her are given, thus ensuring that you don't necessarily have to buy the SGG guide.
Her mid-level incarnation is:
- The Dark Lady Ninyantë (Spellpowered amalgam human dark naga shadow assassin 11, CR 14): Yep, we get 2 complex templates -YES!
Her glorious high-level incarnation is:
-The Dark Lady Ninyantë, Mistress of Venom (Spellpowered amalgam human dark naga shadow assassin 17, CR 21): Oh my, she is deadly. She is beautiful.
She is glorious. I LOVE her.
The pdf does not stop there, though: We also get the two templates, 2 poison-related feats and 3 new magic items. Of course we also get a great page of concise, aptly-written introduction to her as a character complete with dreamburning information and a box of advice on how to use her.
Conclusion: Writing is concise, Editing and formatting are top-notch and adhere to the RiP-two-column standard. Her b/w-artwork is nice and the amount of additional content makes reading this pdf an absolute blast. I didn't notice any glitches in the stat-blocks and they are among the most complex of the series as of yet and her CR 21-incarnation stat-block is a stunning beauty to behold. Some love for the extremely cool shadow assassin base-class does help, too. With all this praise, you can imagine what my final verdict will be - straight 5 stars. One of the best incarnations of the series.
This pdf is 10 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page counters, 1 page SRD, 1 page mini-sheets and 1 page combat & initiative tracker, leaving 5 pages for the monster, so let's check it out!
The cerebral assassin is an aberration with mental abilities that may daze enemies (mind static) and subsequently kill them (mind blast) with another ability, while also offering some abilities to cloak themselves. We get 2 incarnations of the creatures, the regular cerebral assassins (CR 8) and the cerebral assassin paragons (CR 12). The latter actually get some additional abilities beyond simple HD progression, which is nice.
The avid reader can probably guess, which critter these guys are somewhat reminiscent of - hint: They are beloved by many, WotC IP and somehow look like miniature Cthulhu sans wings. I do consider that to be a plus, however, I've also got some points of criticism: Mind blast usually was an ability that stuns enemies, not kills them. I think another name would help to give these creatures a more unique identity. On a mechanical note, while I do think that having to daze an enemy first to kill him via mind blast is a nice idea, I do think that the DCs are high: Mind static being a 30 ft. burst with a DC 19 or 23, mind blast also has these DCs. The paragon has the ability focus feat for mind blast , but the DC is just as high as for mind static, for which the stat block does not mention the feat. Plus, the saves in question are will saves. I'm not sure, but I think I'd prefer variable DCs or them being fort saves. That is only a personal preference, though. What is certain, though, is that regular Assassin's Death attack, with 3 rounds observation and the requirements for available targets is still weaker, making the cerebral assassins potentially very deadly. Another weird choice is that the cerebral assassins get a grab attack, which I could imagine with their inspiration, but from the artwork, I can't imagine them biting PCs.
Conclusion:
Layout, as always with NeoExodus-books, is beautiful. The artwork, while nice, is somewhat ridiculous. while the text for the cerebral assassin is nice, the artwork would elicit laughs from my group. That might just be due to our twisted minds, though. ;)
Once again formatting and editing glitches are there: Additional blank spaces, numbers for skills that have slipped to the next line sans their plus, minor typos (e.g. 3rd person singular and comma errors, etc.) are there etc. More importantly, though, there seems to be a math-error or an omitted feat in the paragon stat-block. I'd do the math for the whole creature, but I'm quite frankly, too lazy. In combination with the rather strange choice of e.g. the grab ability for the creature and my balance concerns for their insta-kill attack, I'll settle for a final verdict of 2 stars.
This pdf is 7 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial + SRD, 1 page mini-sheets and 1 page counters, leaving 3 pages of content, so let's check them out.
The Harvester of Sorrow is an undead creature and uses a sonic ability to make other people aggrieved, a new condition similar to the confused condition and a linear 4 round progression - I.e. after 4 rounds, the creature gains a new save. This might seem a bit powerful, but I still like the idea of the condition. Harvesters also get a new disease they transmit via their bite. They come in two variations, the regular harvesters (CR 4) and Dread Harvesters (CR 6), the latter also getting a nice aura ability. The creatures are quite interesting in that they are rather physically weak undead but can disrupt or potentially kill a lot of PCs/people via their wail and aura. On the downside, though, the disease mentions having an effect of 1d4, but does not specify the attribute it damages, rendering it unusable.
Conclusion:
Layout is beautiful and once again, the artwork rocks. While I encountered some minor editing glitches and typos, there are not too many. I liked the new condition, although its 4-round progression-cycle limits its potential usability with other creatures. On the other hand, the disease does not work as written, which is a big problem. My final verdict will thus be 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2.
This adventure is 27 pages long, 1 page front/back cover, half a page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving 24.5 pages of adventure, so let's check it out!
The pdf adheres to the two-column formatting standard. Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches or typos. The only strange decision of the formatting is that the front and back cover are on the same page, which is a pity as the cover image is nice. There are also some enumeration-dots missing on the last page. Once you check the file out, you notice something immediately: The layout is GORGEOUS. Apart from Green Ronin, I've seldom seen such an appealing, awesome layout: K. Axel Carlson did an outstanding job. The same goes for the ncie pieces of b/w-artwork - they are nice and professional, especially nice is the b/w-artwork of the academy one can show to the PCs. The 3 maps of the academy are also nice - the cartographer Butch Curry did a good job. The adventure is designed for 4 to 5 characters level 5-6 and includes information to scale it to 3rd or 7th level. While it is set in Headless Hydra's Mor Aldenn-setting, it can easily be transferred to just about any city that could house an elite boarding school.
That's about all I can say sans spoilers, so potential players beware and jump to the conclusion.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Still here?
Ok.
This adventure is INTELLIGENT and detailed: The basic plotline is that one of the instructors of an elite-boarding school for noble children to be trained as fighters wants to stage a hostile take-over of the school. He does that via the help of a sorceress who is in fact, without his knowledge, a hag with her own agenda. Armed with the arcane knowledge, he digs up the remains of the one instructor that died in an accident (which has been hushed over and is more or less forgotten) and forces the spirit to haunt the academy to scare the pupils away, ruin the reputation of the school and open his own school. Note that he is not evil, though, and wishes for no-one to get hurt. The hag (part of a coven) has her own agenda and want to eat the children. The hauntings have already driven away several pupils when the PCs are approached by the headmaster.
After a cool, challenging and detailed investigation, the instructor fakes his death and the PCs hopefully find the missing remains of the instructor before facing a challenge like I've never seen before in an adventure: Going on a field-trip with a bunch of children. That's right, the PCs will have to look after a lot of children, defend them against a hill giant and, of course, thwart the plan of the hags, who will try to lure the children to their doom via illusions.
This is where the adventure COULD take a very dark turn indeed, although the adventure specifically advises against this, I wanted to mention that the imagery of the hag-encounter is worthy of authors like e.g. Richard Pett.
The adventure concludes with the PCs returning to the school and the final confrontation depending on the amount of information they unearthed.
The adventure features the instructors and 19 sample pupils with their own personalities and social dynamics.
Conclusion:
I really like good investigation adventures. Unfortunately, they tend to be few and far-between and this adventure is actually a prime example of a GOOD investigation adventure. There are several clues to unearth, more than one path towards victory, massive roleplaying encounters and a fine plethora of personalities. More interestingly, though, is the fact that I haven't ever read an adventure like this. Set in a boarding school, not mean-spirited at all but with this almost dream-like quality to transform into a nightmare. This adventure can be as mature or as funny as you wish and the author Ron Lundeen has done a terrific job of capturing a unique flair that has not been done thousands of times before. I highly recommend this adventure to any DM who wants to master an interesting investigation that he doesn't have to artificially complicate for the players to be a challenge. I recommend this to the hard-core ROLE-players out there. It's a great purchase and my only criticism is with the minor formatting glitches, resulting in a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5. Excellent job!
This pdf is 21 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 16 pages for the 30 intelligent magic items, so let's check them out!
The pdf kicks off with an aptly-written IC-introduction , information on intelligent items. The items include stats, senses, paragraphs on appearance, history, personality, powers, construction requirements and where applicable, special purposes and greater powers.
The items are:
- Altairvat, Seeker of the Dark: A crystalball containing the mind of a diviner driven insane by entities from beyond the stars.
- Astijhen: A full-plate mail for horses with some fear and curse-related powers.
- Atham the Blacktongued: Pan pipes that can send people into nightmare-ridden slumbers and speak with the dead.
- Bahijja the Flatterer: Paranoid scrying mirror that encourages owner to hold grudges.
- Bassa of Masad: Heavy shield that can bite and summon nature's ally.
- Gathib's Teeth: Set of hyena teeth to be worn in mouth grants bite attacks.
- Ghorev the Unlooked-For: Shrunken bird's head can change into a crow.
- Ha-Min's Circlet: Charitable headband of intellect.
- Ha-Min's Trinket (Artifact): Take and protect kappakin.
- Jaril-Junaid: Raging duelist's scimitar with a sense of honor.
- Javar Javarah the Comforter: Greatsword with divine abilities.
- Jealous Jaden: Shatterspike weapon that hates other magical weapons.
- Kassantera the Deceiver: Wooden harp with abilities to confuse and deceive others, can even modify memories.
- Karkinos: Sealed Iron barrel is actually a lobster-like plane-travelling apparatus.
- Ma-Oot-Mah-Zoor: Crystal skull mask grants necromantic abilities.
- Marrija: Clone-creating mirror.
- Marav Azab: Ornate, enchanted walking stick with several travelling abilities.
- Nasirdil: Bloodline-associated ring with summon abilities.
- Navishan: Amulet that improves negative energy channeling.
- Nukramajin's Hand: Skeletal hand held together with wires enables you to speak with dead and raise them.
- Parzamon: Cloak that makes user more persuasive and can dimension door wearer away.
- Ranklikor: Full-plate for horses, can cast haste, overland flight and daylight.
- Red Najaddi: Free-spirited flying carpet.
- Sageseeker: Metal headband devoted to destroying abberations.
- Salchuk Carpet: Flying carpet with druid-like minor defense abilities.
- Stormshaper: Forgiving and nice hide armor with cload giant-related abilities.
- Tam: Mummified gnome hand with helping abilities.
- Tannarik: Assassin's crossbow that tries to dispose of tyrants.
- Tchottochtum: Spear of Orcish warlords.
- The Bat Queen's Cloak: A cloak with bat-like powers used to impersonate a witch queen.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any typos or glitches. Formatting adheres to the two-column standard. The pdf is full-color and follows the stunning, cool layout you already know from the free Pathways e-zine and thus stunningly beautiful. The items are rock-solid mechanics-wise, but where the pdf truly shines is when it comes to the stories, histories and background information. Their powers are also nice and they have an awesome, kind of exotic feeling somewhat reminiscent of Arabian nights mythologies without necessarily limiting the items to them. More importantly, it is absolutely stunning to see how much information the T.H. Gulliver managed to cram into the scarce few sentences available. The artwork provided for some items is beautiful and nice. For the low price, I'll settle for a hearty recommendation of 5 stars.
This pdf is 37 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 32 pages of content for the adventure, so let's dive right in.
The living airship is an adventure for 4-6 characters levels 7-10 and comes in two versions, one printer-friendly and one full-color. That is especially important due to the STUNNINGLY awesome maps by Jonathan Roberts. It's also important due to one fact that just I personally didn't like that much - the full-color version, while adhering to the usual two-column RiP-layout standard, is actually violet/pinkish, which, at least for me, made the text-portion rather unpleasant to look at and rather prefer the b/w-version. That being said, I still think the maps should be printed in color - they are too nice to not be shown in their glory to your players.
All right, that was the spoiler-free section of the review, potential players please jump ahead to the conclusion.
Still here?
Ok, here we go!
This is a straightforward salvage/rescue mission - The PCs try to reclaim an airship that has been high jacked. The adventure kicks off when they reach the complex in the mountains where the ship was taken by the major antagonists, the Vallorians. They have goons to guard the complex, though. Deadly ones. Very deadly ones, i.e. hook- and blade-enhanced trolls, including a sorceress. The troll-cavern also feature traps and a sorceress and, to top it off, should be more or less be done stealthily or at least without alarming the Vallorians. Have I mentioned the enhanced fleshgolems? The caves get awesome maps by cartographer Jonathan Roberts and lead into the Vallorian outpost and this is where the adventure really begins to shine - the PCs, either via stealth or brute force, can explore a small Vallorian base and then, via a set of intermingled bridges, move through 3 huge pillars over a gaping hole in the ground. The pillars contain rooms with even more Vallorians and the PCs, after frenetic battles, finally reach the anchored ship for a dramatic showdown. That ship, though, has been transformed into a semi-conscious weapon of flesh and inanimate matter by the Vallorians and serves as either a grisly trophy or strange reliability. The otherwise complex setup is actually easy to run thanks to the 4 (!!!) GORGEOUS maps, totaling 5 (!!!) beautiful full-color maps of the same quality of the fantastic maps line (minus all the additional bonus stuff of that line, granted.).
We also get 5 pages of appendices that detail the Vallorians, humanoids that moved underground and developed into a new subrace as well as their trademark fleshcrafting items and rules for them.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. The purplish-pinkish color-scheme of the full-color version is too girly for me, though. I liked the b/w-artwork and the full-color maps are absolutely stunning.
This adventure feels completely different from almost all crawls I've read so far in that it more feels like a dungeon run - fast-paced, iconic and action-ladden. Yes, there is not much downtime and the dungeon does not offer many diversions, alternate routes etc. It doesn't have to. If you want to know what the closest thing to this one is, I'd reply the showdown of a James Bond movie. Alters have been sounded, tough enemies go for you, an iconic backdrop and a climatic showdown. The Vallorians are cool enemies and their fleshcrafting makes them sufficiently alien and disturbing.
I love smart investigation adventures, but this is a straight action romp you have to like - fast-paced, deadly and no adventure to turn your brain off - yeah, it's action, but if you don't fight smart, you'll be squashed. I DMed an upgraded version of this adventure recently and my players loved it as a nice change of pace from diplomacy, investigation etc. My final verdict will be 4.5 stars due to both the color-scheme and the fact that the lines of the text feel further apart than usual in RiP-books. Perhaps it's also another font, I don't know. If you want a cool, deadly, fast-paced romp - go for it! Plus: If you need your PCs to get a means of transportation they might discard again, this adventure is just about perfect.
This pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 3/4 of a page SRD, leaving 13 1/4 pages for the adventure, so let's see how it holds up!
This being an adventure, the review contains spoilers, so potential players beware.
At the Heart of Evil is a free adventure by Headless Hydra Games for characters level 6 to 8 and revolves around the PCs exploring a ruined keep of the Order of the Sanguine Star. The keep has been corrupted and the order slaughtered by a paladin of said order turned blackguard. The adventure centers around battling mostly incorporeal undead, collecting gems they leave behind and ritually laying their souls to rest to prevent them from respawning.
The adventure per se is a very straightforward little crawl. Where it stands out, is in the beautiful b/w-artwork I didn't expect in a free product as well as the maps provided for the keep - cover & interior artists as well as the cartographer did a great job.
The adventure also features two new magic items: A magic saddle and the banner of the order.
There is not too much to comment on story-wise, but I'll mention some peculiarities: This adventure actually feels like a prequel to the REAL adventure, e.g. holding the keep against an undead army led by the blackguard Sir Gareth Strongfist etc. I especially got this impression due to the focus the background story has on said Sir Gareth, the fact that his name is always written in italics and the distinct lack of his stats in this book.
Which brings me to my next little gripe: There are no stats in this book, only references to other books and not even the page numbers where we can find these critters. Looking the numbers up would have taken 5 minutes and been a great service to DMs. More importantly, some enemies have the fiendish template. While I learned to apply it on-the-fly, I don't know whether every DM out there is willing to do that.
On the other side, this adventure is FREE.
Conclusion:
Editing is nice; Although there are some awkward sentences, none hampered my understanding of the adventure. The are some strange formatting decisions like putting Gareth's name always in italics. Layout and artwork are absolutely top-notch and deserve high praises. The crawl itself is short, sweet, uncomplicated and yet exciting and not too easy. While I would have loved to get the stat-blocks and a great final encounter with the often-alluded-to Sir Gareth, I'm hoping for a sequel. That being said, I'd usually rate this lower, but come on - it's a free adventure, it's a fun little crawl and it's got great artwork and cartography, so even if you only scavenge one part, what can you do wrong? My final verdict will thus be 4 stars.
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